All the Light We Cannot See
By Melissa Camacho,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Flawed, violent adaptation has cursing, drinking, smoking.
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All the Light We Cannot See
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Based on 2 parent reviews
Review of profanity is not accurate.
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What's the Story?
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Anthony Doerr, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE tells the story of a young blind French woman who uses her radio during the Nazi occupation to help end the war. It's 1944, and teenager Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti) is alone in the walled city of Saint-Malo, France, after being separated from her father, Daniel (Mark Ruffalo), the keeper of the keys of the Paris National Museum. She secretly broadcasts a radio show from her flat in hopes of reaching her father and her uncle, Etienne LeBlanc (Hugh Laurie), an agoraphobic WWI veteran working for the French Resistance, while transmitting coded messages to the Allies. Meanwhile, Werner Pfenning (Louis Hofmann), a German orphan forced into the military due to his advanced radio skills, listens to her broadcasts from a Saint-Malo hotel to keep his spirits up rather than reporting her to his superiors. But unbeknownst to Marie-Laure, her father carries with him a secret that sadistic Nazi Officer Reinhold von Rumpel (Lars Eldinger) is eager to discover. Soon Pfenning finds himself doing everything he can to keep the Nazis from finding her.
Is It Any Good?
The disappointing adaptation of Anthony Doerr's award-winning novel offers an awkwardly paced narrative that lacks the heart and depth of the original story. While it has some cinematic flair, fans of the book may feel that the overall series offers more style than substance due to some key plot changes and the often trite dialogue, which was written by Peaky Blinders' Steven Knight. Some may also find parts of this four-part series confusing, thanks to flashbacks that are informative but create a disjointed storytelling process.
Its inability to deliver well-developed characters and its reliance on common World War II tropes lead to the most egregious failure of All the Light We Cannot See: It glosses over the difficult moral questions Doerr raises in his work, including the lengths to which an active Nazi soldier can be simultaneously good and evil. Nonetheless, the overall production effectively manages to underscore the futility of war, and to those who haven't read the book, it offers a mildly entertaining historical drama.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the German occupation of France at the end of the war. What were the strategic reasons for the Nazis to hold on to villages like Saint-Malo? Why did it take so long to liberate them?
What does All the Light We Cannot See refer to? Who uses the phrase in the series? Why?
TV Details
- Premiere date: November 2, 2023
- Cast: Aria Mia Loberti , Mark Ruffalo , Hugh Laurie , Louis Hofmann , Lars Eldinger
- Network: Netflix
- Genre: Drama
- Topics: Activism , Great Girl Role Models , History
- TV rating: TV-MA
- Last updated: November 11, 2023
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