"The great city of Babylon has fallen, fallen! It has become a dwelling place for demons, and a den of every unclean spirit." (Revelation 18:1-2)
The German drama "Babylon Berlin" is adapted from the novel of the same name and has been broadcast for three seasons so far. Although it is difficult to escape the traces of the film and television industry and the consumer market, this work is still a rare masterpiece. The story took place in the late Weimar Republic in April 1929, and by the end of the third season, the time only stayed in October of that year. In a short period of time, various trends of thought and forces were surging and conflicting: in chronological order, Trotskyites, CPSU, Democracy (Weimar Union), German Communist Party, Black Gang, Conservatives, Royalists, Wehrmacht, and Nazis appeared one after another.
Like many film and television works, "Babylon Berlin" also adopts a scattered narrative method. It intercepts the historical section in 1929 and then unfolds it in multiple lines. In German history, this year is not as critical as 1918 when the Weimar Republic was established, 1933 when Hitler came to power, and 1939 when World War II broke out, but through this cross-section, the viewer can very well connect the twenty to thirty years. Traces of the history of Germany before and after the era. In 1929, the Trotskyists and the CPSU fought in Berlin; the Wehrmacht and conservatives were increasingly dissatisfied with the Treaty of Versailles; the Weimar authorities brutally suppressed the labor movement; the economic crisis swept Europe and the United States; the Nazis gradually entered the stage of history...
Although part of the plot has a "romance" nature, the success of this play is that it does not fall into trivial branch lines, and the clues are interlaced and layered: From the plot point of view, the clues from the first season to the second season are relatively clear , revolves around the competition for a truckload of gold between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Trotskyites, Wehrmacht, and gangs. The second and third seasons are slightly more fragmented, revolving around the struggle between the Democrats and the "conspiracy" between the Wehrmacht and the conservatives, the death of a female star, the maid Greta, and the economic crisis. Starting from the cross-section in 1929, many clues gradually converge into a clear main line. By the end of the third season, the scene of the Nazis coming to power is ready; and from the perspective of characters, this play can also be regarded as the spiritual journey of the protagonists of the story, Grian and Charlotte.
"Babylon Berlin" does not describe these histories objectively; it confronts the protagonist with them. Individual experience under the grand history may be the most direct and personal way for modern people to enter history. Because as a single individual living in the world, we must experience some important moments in person - if we are in the whirlpool of the times, it is even more unavoidable. But if the limitations of this perspective cannot be recognized, then history can also be misty. This is also the problem with Babylon Berlin, where breadth replaces depth, presenting history but escaping from history. All experiencers have thus obtained a false security belonging to modern people.
The hero of the story, Grian, is a police officer from Cologne and is a Catholic, but he and his sister-in-law Helga have maintained an ambiguous relationship for many years. Participated in World War I. At that time, because he was afraid of death, he left his brother who had fallen in position and retreated to the rear. Also suffers from combat stress. He was commissioned by his father to investigate and destroy a secret tape in Berlin. The heroine of the story, Charlotte, has a poor family. The old and young sisters live in a rented house, and her mother is ill. She often went to nightclubs to make money, and by chance she got a job in the police station.
The obvious commonality between the male and female protagonists is that they are both rootless. Charlotte's situation makes us understand very well, and the nightclub/dance/bar that makes her flesh feel real is the place where modern society has no roots. Grian's situation is different. He deviates from his siblings and also from the teachings. Coupled with the trauma of the war, he is in a state of spiritual exile.
Let's look at a few supporting characters. They don't play for a long time, but they are remarkable in image building. The pro-democracy MP Benda and the police chief, Tribesky, were determined and courageous enough to respond to the enemies of Weimar democracy and defend the Weimar constitution: one tried to expose the military conspiracy, the other quickly suppressed the workers' march. Two other conservative figures are also worth mentioning, police officer Walter, also a World War I veteran, and Hindenburg's assistant MP Winter. At one point, the two conservatives briefly revealed their ideological edge to Grian:
"You're not a hero, you're a traitor. Worthless, immoral, and gutless. We're for other purposes, and you? You'll just play by the rules, like any other coward..." (Walter)
"Private interests are of little value to me. It is our country that has benefited from this massive cleanup of Jews and Bolsheviks. I have a task on my shoulders, a task to point out the future of rebuilding Germany. direction, but I don't expect you to have such a vision. You're nothing more than a disciplined cop." (Winter)
The two exchanges did not form a real dialogue of ideas. Because the "opponent"'s thoughts are too clear and powerful, it makes the protagonist look a bit weird: Grian only has passive "actions", but there is no active "response", or no direct response of equal weight. The question and answer are misplaced. His "answer" is logical, but it avoids the core of the question: in Grian's view, Walter, as a policeman, colluded with the Wehrmacht to violate the constitution and kill his colleagues; Winter killed his colleagues at the hands of the Nazis Dead pro-democracy MP Benda, and blamed a maid. That is, they violated the Weimar democracy and acted inhumanly, so they stood on the opposite side of Grian. But they are also questioning the legitimacy of Weimar democracy at a certain extreme of the naked eye, and questioning the insurmountable reason of the rules/norms/regulations in the way of "exception" (Karl Schmidt).
Compared to his conservative opponents, Grian does not exist as a thought individual with sufficient strength, and at these moments he does not even have the waves of thought, suspending the spirit of the ego. In this sense, he is instead the one who is dogmatic and refuses to communicate. Therefore, his actions are firm and empty, always in action but lacking sufficient tension and connotation.
The unresponsive Grian is a modern "myth" (in Roland Barthes). The content of this myth is that man will always exist in the image of loneliness, abandonment, melancholy, vulnerable, resisting despair and inescapable. The prevalence of this myth in the world began "after Auschwitz". Because the protagonist is "too" modern, and we are modern people who exist as isolated individuals, so this is why "Babylon Berlin" makes the viewer feel a certain kind of immediacy and affinity. Only the rootless will resonate with the rootless story.
As for the opponent of this modern myth, German history after 1933 has eloquently dejustified everything conservatives say. Although I don't think the main character's ideological dialogue with conservatives is realized in the play, there is no doubt that some of their ideas are presented. This history can easily become hollow and easy to disentangle in such a narrative. The portrayal of conservatives in the play is intuitive and crude. Several scenes of Winter's appearances, manor, forest, and racetrack, show the relationship between conservatives and the "earth", but they do not reflect the hidden contradiction between the two, some root problem. Traditional conservatives are defenders of the secular order, but in modern times, conflicts have intensified, and the earth has lost its original affinity and no longer bears traditional values and morals.
The more modern the world is, the more rootless and conflict will arise. However, at least in Germany, where social thought turned to the right in the 1920s and 1930s, these rootless people seemed too modern and too abrupt. Their own efforts cannot change the torrent of the times, they can only make themselves sober and painful. This is also a tragic story that has been staged countless times in modern society. For example, Camus' "The Plague" also creates a scenario in which modern individuals face a plague (plague/war) from the Lord. It is a moment of metaphysical decision taking place in the modern age, but Camus has chosen a safe way out - through the way the individual rebels against the pain of existence, against the weight of nothingness. In this sense, and as the "plague" strikes again in 2020, Mario Vargas Llosa, in his "Return to the Middle Ages? (Regreso al Medioevo) called The Plague a "bad, mediocre novel".
In the play, Winter said at a Wehrmacht gathering: "Today, to be conservative means not only to defend, but to be conservative means to create what is worth protecting." ), which made people's eyes shine: "Politics is a matter of fate. In politics, like in life, instinct is more important than knowledge." As a staunch conservative revolutionary, Yungel did not change his controversial ideas in the eyes of his German descendants even in his later years. In his book On the Marble Cliff (1939), he had a premonition that war was coming, but he was not a pacifist, because peace is the fantasy of modern society anesthetizing itself. In his book, he vividly depicts the runaway civilization of civilization in modern times:
"Those who pretended to be wise and wise enough to worship their old ancestors, but in the end, they all succumbed to the magic of barbarian idols. The ignorance of these people is more hateful than the drunkards who get drunk at noon. They think they are soaring in the sky, I still brag about it, but in fact it’s just a flies in the dust.”
"Babylon Berlin" is a work of heart. It tries to present the ruptures and conflicts of German society in detail at that time, although it is difficult to see real reflection and response at some key points, and makes us witness the birth of a modern myth again. . Perhaps we should not stop here, stop at understanding that era in a modern and safe way. Their time has passed, but their voices have not disappeared.
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