Natasha E

(Spoilers alert) The book is one of my favorite novels and I’ve read it twice and since the first time I read I knew it would make for an amazing on screen experience if done right so I was very excited when I heard an adaptation was finally coming. I was also nervous because I didn’t want it to “ruin” the book but I went in knowing it could never match it and I think that helped. I feel like the bad reviews are a bit exaggerated. The production quality and cinematography is incredible. The actor who played Von Rumpel was amazing. I was happy to see lots of scenes and details straight from the novel come to life on the screen. Not a fan of some of the changes to the story though :( I was surprised to see mark ruffalo do such a bad job. Terrible accent. And the actress who played Marie Laurie was alright but I expected more emotion out of her. She was a bit flat sometimes. Etiennes casting felt spot on but his transformation into armed resistance fighter was too far a stretch from the character in the novel and no one gets cured from PTSD in one day. Dialogue was very cheesy and some things were so on the nose, sometimes narrating historical facts (like the race “science” scene, for example). Not a lot of subtlety and this is really because of the writing. Also, I don’t understand why literally every single Nazi soldier and Gestapo yelled at the top of their lungs lol. We all know these folks were evil but I don’t think the nonstop yelling was necessary to convey that - it felt kinda too much and almost ridiculous at times. There were moments where Werner was more aggressive than he was in the book and I didn’t like that. But the actor who played him did a pretty good job. It’s kinda like what I imagined. His ending in the book broke my heart but felt real and the tragedy felt part of the story. He could be so much, as Volkheimer would say (volkheimer isn’t in the Netflix series aside from one short scene). His death was one more thing driving home the reality that war is so tragic and heartbreaking and destructive to people, families, and human potential. I wish there wasn’t any romance even though I wished that for them sometimes when reading the book. I wish some of the actual interesting science lessons given by the professor were shared. And I really wish they didn’t repeat the phrase “all the light we cannot see” so many times. The messaging around light versus dark felt forced and repetitive. I still give it 4 stars despite all of this because I do think there was a real effort here and there were soooo many scenes that did feel straight from the book and with the epic cinematography I appreciated those scenes. I had been waiting to see on a screen people and scenes I had already pictured in my mind and certain stills and sequences really to bring parts of the book to life.