I have been cursed with a free subscription to Netflix that comes with my cell phone service. I have never used a streaming service until now.
Of course, I have gotten hooked on the apocalyptic series which, when they end, do not tie loose ends together or conclude stories begun. It drives me crazy.
I just starting watching “To the Lake”. I discovered it is a Russian production made in 2019 and only has seven episodes. I like that. I just watched the second installment.
It is very fascinating from several points of view. It is a Russian production. It is very well filmed and directed. I have never watched a Russian TV show and I am blown away by it because it is so good.
It is apocalyptic. Moscow and presumably the world is suffering from a virus (similar to Covid, btw) that is killing people quickly and causing a shut-down, quarantine and chaos. What is fascinating it that this Russian production was made before the Covid Pandemic! Isn’t that interesting!
In the first episode, there is a news scene on television where a doctor lets the cat out of the bag in terms of how bad the epidemic is, only to be censored and what he is saying cut off as it goes to a commercial break. Later there is a parody from social media mocking the government’s response. Keep in mind this is a Russian show made for Netflix (English is dubbed, btw).
There is excellent character development of the main characters, the good, bad and ugly.
Morality figures into the series too. There are two characters, a teenage boy with autism and a teenage girl with all kinds of moral issues and addictions. Yet, there is already in the second episode a maturation of the girl and her stepping up to the plate to help in a desperate situation.
The ending of the second episode, there is an unseen person speaking to the main characters on a Walkie-Talkie-talkie devise. We don’t see him, just hear is voice and he is dying of the virus. He speaks of his family and joining them (presumably they are dead from the virus too). He asks for prayers and one of the main characters prays a beautiful prayer to Jesus Christ for this man’s salvation which is then taken up by the autistic teenager concluding it with a beautiful Russian Orthodox prayer for deliverance and forgiveness at the hour of death. The prayers are heartfelt and not presented in any mocking sort of way or artificial way just for the sake of prayer.
The autistic boy is shown to have feelings, to be bright, although his mother in the show explains to another character why he can’t read social situations, respond properly to those situations and is aloof from others as well as mostly non-verbal. Yet, he is portrayed in a very positive way, with feelings he doesn’t understand and some normal human responses. I think this is the first time I have seen an autistic child on a series since “Saint Elsewhere” which I loved back in the 80’s. That character, a younger child, has a minor role until the end, when it is revealed that the entire series of Saint Elsewhere was in his imagination! A brilliant conclusion and very apt!
This Russian production delving into so many positive and negative issues in an “apocalyptic” setting has be quite interesting to me. Stunning, no?
1 comment:
Sounds like a premise and motif similar to the 1959 film “On the Beach”. I’ll watch it.
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