“Babylon Berlin”, a policeman with an expressionist spirit …

“Everyone should visit Berlin sometimes, ”suggests the poster attached to a night lantern. Explicit admission of Babylon Berlin like a mind-blowing excursion in the metropolis during the Weimar Republic. Dark cop, political thriller and historical drama in this pressure cooker directed by Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, run; The perfume Yes Sense 8). Haggard survivors, nocturnal lust, extreme poverty, cabaret stars, warlike defeatism, shock therapy, bullies and idealists coexist here. “In the series, we try to bring together everything that is multifaceted from that time, you have a wide variety of layers, and the goal of our approach was to try to capture that diversity,” says its director. at Page 12. With three seasons to date, and a fourth confirmed, the ostentatious and award-winning German delivery will have its premiere this Thursday at 22 in Europe Europe. The day after its linear release, each chapter will be available on Flow.

The introduction shows Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) during a hypnosis session. He is a devout Catholic who seeks to alleviate the memories and ailments of what happened on the battlefield with a diet rich in opioids. Paradoxically, The detective works in the Berlin police anti-vice unit and has to disrupt a mafia-controlled porn cinema network. And as in any good exponent of black, in the program, the links between the underworld and political power are well oiled. Fictional of another traumatized by the First War as Tommy Shelby although he lives miles from the Birmingham in which it is set Peaky Blinders. On the other hand, according to the actor himself, “Gereon Rath is a small piece of this enormous puzzle which is Babylon Berlin“. Monkfish Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) also works against the light. This is an insightful secretary of the force who wants to become the city’s first agent. These are tough times so to fill her tummy she works a double shift as a hooker in the lewd Moka Efti.

With them appear a whole range of vitriolic characters, among which stands out a Russian countess who plays various points and stars in the sequence that defined Babylon Berlin. In the streets, a group of revolutionaries appears and inside the cabaret the aristocrat (Severija Janušauskaitė) performer “Zu Asche, Zu Staub”. The segment is packed with swing spirit, flapper girls, crossdressers, and an automaton desire with references to Josephine Baker and The blue angel. Beyond its glamorous bluster (Bryan Ferry played a crooner role), the series plunges into the misery, danger and famine of this time and place. In this sense, Tykwer says that to escape the superficial gaze I dive between materials like M, the vampire Yes Berlin, a city symphony. “We watched the documentary Walther Ruttman with the whole team. It is a fascinating work, very stylized, where we see the night of Berlin, but also how the workers lived and the artistic intensity of this period, which we precisely wanted to achieve. To represent the energy of life at that time and give an impact to the city with its cinematic atmosphere ”.

Babylon Berlin, on the other hand, is based on Volker Kutscher’s successful literary saga consisting of seven novels. “The whole panorama comes together thanks to these crimes and mysteries that you have around you. The novels gave us a structure and then spread much more. There are many series in the same series. The police are one thing that helps the public not to get lost. But that’s just one part, for me Babylon Berlin it’s like a fruit cake, ”says Tykwer. There is only one prohibited ingredient. “The program is specifically focused on the time before the rise of the Nazis. The moment when we enter this territory will be the end, ”he assures us.