Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tunenut (A) on December 12, 2019 at 10:04:20

I'd been putting this one off for awhile, I think the first season came out in 2017.

It's German with English subtitles. It is not a spoiler to reveal that it is an exploration of the effects of time travel. Early in the series, after a boy disappears, the headline "where is Mikkel" is altered to read "When is Mikkel."

The situation becomes quite confusing, as the viewer tries to remember which young person at one time period is the same as the old person in another time period, and which time period are we actually seeing, and how all the various people at different ages relate to each other.

What I like best about this is that it embraces all of the strange paradoxes of travel back in time. Most stories with this theme fall apart when examined too closely. These writers absolutely jump in to every paradox. A book is brought back in time to its author, and he explains that this "bootstrap paradox" means that the book never actually had an origin. People meet relatives that are way too old or too young, and people even meet themselves at different ages. If things don't make sense, well this is how it is when time travel can happen. It's a pretty clever exploration.

I'm not quite done with season 2 and I don't know how it all resolves or if indeed it can actually really resolve. But it is interesting enough to make the effort to try to figure out who is who at different times, and this means it is more work than your average series. I also like the music, and one of the features of each show is a musical montage set to some sort of dream pop song. Which is usually pretty good. Against my expectations, I am quite enjoying this.