Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing the third chapter of the twisted German time travel series, released December 1, 2017.
“Past and Present (Gestern und Heute)”
Written by Jantje Friese and Marc O. Seng
Directed by Baran bo Odar
November 5, 1986: Mikkel wanders Winden, wondering why his parents seem to have vanished. Chief inspector Egon Tiedemann, who is preoccupied with Mads Nielsen’s disappearance, is called on to investigate the unauthorized slaughter of a flock of sheep. His daughter, Claudia, begins her first day as director of the nuclear power plant.
1. The Lost Boy
If there’s one thing you can say about Dark, it’s that the casting for older and younger versions of characters is absolutely impeccable: teenage Ulrich and Katharina (Ludger Bökelmann and Nele Trebs) are so much like their older counterparts (Oliver Masucci and Jördis Triebel), they’re unmistakable. Yet Mikkel cannot process how he arrived 33 years in the past (could you, even as an adult?), and continues looking for his parents at the school (bothering his future mother no less), and the police station.
Egon reckons Ulrich has sent this boy in revenge for Mads’s unsolved disappearance, and calls the hospital to take Mikkel while he has a word at the Nielsen home. It’s only after looking at the casefile regarding his uncle’s disappearance in Egon’s office, that Mikkel finally accepts what’s happened, and he goes completely silent. At the hospital, Mikkel is examined by Ines (a nurse in 1986), who gives him copies of Captain Future to cheer him up. On seeing that word, Mikkel finally summons the strength to tell Ines when he’s from — and it’s also why she thinks he’s making it up. (If only he’d claimed to be a “Spaceman from Pluto.”)
2. ‘80s Feminism
Claudia Tiedemann is introduced driving to work, while admonishing her daughter Regina (Bartosz’s eventual mother) for her unkempt appearance. It’s a fascinating contrast: she’s making this progressive stride as the first female director of the power plant, but she’s also quite socially conservative, between her fancy clothes, hair, make-up and jewellery, and shaming her daughter for not being interested in looking beautiful. (Whatever that means.) The emotional distance is reinforced by the creators’ decision to have Regina sit behind her mother in the car, as if she’s luggage.
Immediately afterwards, we see Katharina, Hannah and another girl talking about the controversial Falco song “Jeanny,” which is about a girl who’s kidnapped and murdered for wearing red lipstick — Hannah interjects that her father says “lipstick is only for prostitutes.” With these mixed messages across town, is it any wonder it’s indicated Regina is self-harming?
3. 33 Dead Sheep
Egon is informed by Farmer Albers that 33 healthy sheep have suddenly died overnight. The shepherd is reminded of Mark 13:33: “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time [the apocalypse] will come.” Egon says he didn’t know the shepherd was religious: Albers replies the “parish has a new priest. A good man.” (All I can say for now is that it’s strange to draw attention to an offscreen character like this.)
The notion of vandalism motivated by atheism weighs heavily on Egon’s mind. It should, as 33 is a significant number in a number of spiritual and religious traditions: a third as a percentage is 33.333 percent, an endless and eternal number, reflecting the unending nature of the Trinity. 33 is also the age Christ — the Good Shepherd — is said to have died; it is the highest attainable rite in Masonry; and it is the boiling point of water on the Newton scale. (And of course, this is the third episode, where Mikkel has arrived 33 years in the past.)
When Egon confronts Ulrich, he notices his interest in heavy metal — we hear the Kreator song “Pleasure to Kill” — and a hoof in his possession: it seems the Satanic Panic was not just an American phenomenon. However, a vet informs him the sheep all died of sudden cardiac arrest after their eardrums were ruptured (just like the boy found in 2019). “They’re all as God created them,” he quips. It’s still an eerie coincidence.
Continued below4. Life Begins at 44
Back to Claudia: I like how she’s introduced as the protagonist of her own story, beginning her first day in her new job, without an establishing scene with her father, or a partner. She’s presumably divorced or widowed given no one else is home when Regina returns from school, but it is revealed she was once in a relationship with Tronte Nielsen — who, it has to be said, is utter scum for suggesting they revive their relationship while requesting an interview, when his wife is still distraught over their son’s disappearance. (Like father, like son.)
Claudia’s predecessor, Bernd Doppler (Peter’s grandfather), tells her that she is not only in charge of the plant, but responsible for the whole town. Winden’s economy is clearly dependent on the plant, but I don’t think she realizes just how right he is: soon, he guides her to the mysterious yellow barrels in the caves, and his son Helge — the awkward cleaner at the plant — gifts her with a copy of H.G. Tannhaus’s A Journey Through Time.
5. Splitscreen
The episode ends with Egon inspecting the field (which the dead sheep have all been removed from), and the power fluctuating (for the first time?), as unconscious birds begin raining out of the sky. If it’s the apocalypse, as Hannah jokes to Ulrich at a bus stop, it’s rather beguiling. The screen splits, clarifying who’s who in 1986 and 2019 as we see how they (or don’t) react:
– Young Charlotte, a budding artist, places the dead birds in a freezer, while her older self observes the flock that’s dropped outside the police station.
– Regina studies her body and applies lipstick in 1986, while in 2019 she examines a lump on her breast.
– Tronte, in both eras, remains a distant husband who’d rather venture out at night than be there at his depressed wife’s bedside.
– Ulrich’s bad boy tendencies may have subsided to just adultery in 2019, but he’s still staring at an empty child’s bed.
Incidentally, we don’t see Claudia or Helge in 2019. Adult Ulrich decides to return to the cave to open the locked door with a crowbar, while Mikkel escapes the hospital to make his way back through the cave. Ulrich uses a blue flashlight, and Mikkel’s scene is lit by the orange glow of a pocketed lighter. Those shots aren’t shown via splitscreen, almost fooling us into believing the two are occupying the same space in time. Ulrich is unsuccessful, while Mikkel breaks his leg, and both slump out of the cave defeated, but not before hearing each other.
And all the while, Tannhaus is working on the Stranger’s device…
Other Observations:
– Is the Raider bar commercial product placement if they were rebranded as Twix?
– Egon says he’s certain Ulrich will never become a policeman — hindsight makes fools of us all in the end.
– This episode’s sparsest exposition comes in the form of Bernd looking at the photos he’s removing from his desk, which lets us know how he and Helge appeared in 1953.
Well folks, tomorrow marks, serendipitously, the release of the third and final season. (Today is actually when the penultimate episode of season 2 takes place.) I hope you have an awesome weekend, and we’ll be back next week to discuss the fourth episode, “Double Lives (Doppelleben).”
