Babylon Berlin  Season 4 – Trailers From Hell

It’s a dive into an intoxicating, anarchic slice of the 20th-century, the brief era that was Weimar Germany. The society still reels from crushing defeat and dark political forces are gearing up for a malign future. Berlin’s nightlife churns with experimental art, debauched revelry and untempered vice. Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer and Achim von Borries’ massive series has been called the best thing on TV; the complex web of characters, intrigues, passions and derangement is presented with fantastic period art direction and directed and performed to raise a drug-fueled sweat — the action, music, color and historical comment are fascinating. It’s the most exciting show since the heyday of Nordic Noir.

Babylon Berlin Season 4
Blu-ray
Kino Lorber
2022 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 710 min. / 3 discs, 12 episodes / Street Date October 15, 2024 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95
Starring: Volker Bruch, Liv Lisa Fries, Lars Eidinger, Irene Böhm, Benno Fürmann, Hanno Koffler, Ronald Zehrfeld, Hannah Herzsprung, Meret Becker, Jens Harzer, Karl Markovics, Saskia Rosendahl, Marie-Anne Fliegel, Christian Friedel, Ernest Stözner, Fritzi Haberlandt, Mark Ivanir.
Cinematography: Bernd Fischer, Philipp Haberlandt, Christian Almesberger
Production Designer: Uli Hanisch
Art Directors: Daniel Chour, Thorsten Klein, Kai Koch
Costumes: Pierre-Yves Gayraud
Film Editors: Alexander Berner, Claus Wehlisch, Antje Zynga
Original Music: Johnny Klimek, Tom Twyker
Main title design: Saskia Marka
Produced by Stefan Arndt, Tom Tykwer, Frank Jastfelder, Michael Polle, Uwe Schott
Created, Written and Directed by Henk Handloegten, Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries

Volker Kutscher’s 2008 novel The Wet Fish is reportedly the source for the German teleseries  Berlin Babylon, a massive undertaking launched by Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries, and Tom Tykwer. Tykwer is a known quantity in America for his 1998 film  Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run), and with the Wachowskis, for 2012’s ambitious Sci-fi picture Cloud Atlas.

We’re reviewing a Blu-ray release of  Babylon Berlin Season 4, the latest installment of the much-celebrated series. We’re told that a 5th season may be filming as we speak; if it happens we’ll jump on it the moment it comes within reach. Unlike other shows disrupted by COVID, Babylon Berlin was so popular that it’s stayed fairly close to plan. Season 1 debuted in 2017 and the fourth was first broadcast in 2022.

The only point of reference for American newcomers may be the movie Cabaret.

Where to begin?  Babylon Berlin’s first aim is to illuminate a very special period of time: the last 6 years or so of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s post- WWI attempt at a constitutional democracy. Beginning in 1928 (I think), the first season drops us unsuspecting into a boiling drama, a web of interlocking stories. The main character is the psychologically-damaged detective Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), who has been brought to Berlin from a smaller city for a purpose he can’t divulge to his new colleagues, a suspicious bunch. Some are caught up in various illegal dealings. Gangsters are running giant nightclubs, some of which like the ‘Moka Efti’ are also brothels.

The wild life is five times wilder, and more graphic, than anything hinted at in the musical  Cabaret. A wide swath of ‘liberties’ has taken hold of a segment of the population, which shows itself in rampant drug use and sexual exploitation. The art scene is more advanced than anywhere save perhaps for Paris. The distinctive modernist movements from Weimar, including expressionist filmmaking, are still with us, exerting influence worldwide. German films are considered by many to be the equal of what Hollywood creates.

Maybe ‘anything goes’ because ‘nothing works.’  

The fabric of society is not really holding together, as will become apparent with Europe’s parallel financial Depression of 1930. Those aware of Alfred Döblin’s  Berlin Alexanderplatz will understand the soul-crushing economic disaster we’re shown. Still not recovered from the terrible inflation of just a few years before, Berlin is split between those doing very well and a large population of starving, freezing have-nots. The second main character is Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), a smart slum teenager with a strong survival instinct. She’s working as a prostitute to help her impoverished family. Her younger siblings have turned to various kinds of pilfering to get by, including her sister Toni (Irene Böhm). The ambitious and daring Charlotte connects with Gereon Rath, and eventually wins herself a place in the Police department.

Just a few of the interlocking stories in seasons 1-3… A group of Russian agents are trying to wrest control of a train of gold (don’t ask), that is also coveted by a German consortium of ex-military officers allied with industrial moguls. Their aim is to overthrow Weimar and establish an authoritarian state ‘more friendly to business.’  Hitler’s National Socialist movement of course hovers in the background. We strain to identify the allegiances in a power struggle that involves a Krupp-like industrial dynasty, a family warped by internal tensions.

Detective Rath finds himself recruiting trusted friends within the police department, to confirm or disprove terrible rumors — is it possible that an illegal German army is being trained in the East, in Poland or Russia?  The vast civil police department is partly politicized, and several of Rath’s detective colleagues are conspiring with the usurpers. What about the terrible murders at a film studio, shooting a strange retro- expressionist musical?  The culprit disguises himself as a fiendish masked ‘phantom of the studio.’  The film outfit is run by the same unstable gangster brothers that operate the Moka Efti club. One of them is married to Esther Korda (Meret Becker), a wild actress-singer deep into the art scene.

Babylon Berlin dazzles us with its exaggerated heists, medical experimentation and nightlife debauchery. Instead of reproducing events from history, it invents events that resemble signposts on the way to Fascism. Policy maneuverings in high places give rightwing terror a green light, while the radical communists become an excuse for crackdowns orchestrated by conspirators itching to gain control of industry, the police, and the civil government. Charlotte tries to save a convicted murderess (Leonie Benesch) from a rushed execution — to be performed with a method that should have been left in the Middle Ages.

Filmmaker Tom Tykwer is known for his visual experimentation. One of the brightest things about Babylon Berlin is the way it leaps between different styles, reflecting the clashing art movements of the period. The terrific Main Title Sequences express the series’ adroit merging of film and radical art. The show is after the dynamism of Weimar excess, not strict historical authentic. The wild club dancing is only somewhat connected to experimental dance of the time, just as the hot jazz club music is probably too amped-up to pass for the real thing. But the songs and the stylized dancing are undeniably exciting. The young people burn their candles at both ends. Gereon and Charlotte can work for hours and still spend half the night dancing like maniacs.

We were in awe of the series’ production values from the very beginning. The production constructed enormous sets of entire blocks of Berlin circa 1929, as did the Weimar classic  Asphalt. We assume that CGI was employed around the margins. The atmosphere is enforced by armies of well costumed and coiffed extras, and a flotilla of excellent vehicles.

The show will intrigue those with even a cursory awareness of the art movements of the previous decade, especially in the movies. The weird graphic animation of the end credits is either a lift from or an exact imitation of Dada film experiments of the early ’20s. It’s the spirit that counts — we accept the thrust of the story, even when plotlines involve complex crimes and espionage maneuvers that would humble Fritz Lang. The show is never cheap, in any way.

Season 4 hits around 1931, when Oligarchs and Fascists are starting to assert themselves on every level. A liberal journalist and his friends risk prison to prove that a military conspiracy is training an army in secret, not realizing that they’ve been detected. The criminal underworld in Berlin comes to blows over a rigged wrestling match. A megalomanic industrialist (Lars Edinger) defies his family and announces plans to put a man on the moon. He demonstrates a functioning rocket as the centerpiece of an outsized promotional gala.

A Jewish-American gangster arrives by Zeppelin to take revenge on the industrialist family’s theft of a priceless, legendary jewel. In trying to help her delinquent sister avoid arrest, detective Charlotte Ritter falls into the trap of an unscrupulous police official, and puts her job in jeopardy.

The Fascist street thugs are divided into competing paramilitary police organizations. One goes rogue and targets Jewish businesses while the cops look the other way. Donning a brownshirt uniform, Gereon Rath joins this group as an agent provocateur. The arrogant leader thinks his beer hall appeal is strong enough to displace ‘the pretender’ Adolf Hitler. Working behind the scenes, Charlotte is able to put part of her life back together — she makes contact with a long-lost half brother, a champion boxer whose non-Aryan background outrages the Nazis. Stepping far outside the lines of legal conduct, Rath takes part in another conspiracy that finishes with a bloodbath among the city’s gangs.

Season four has more violent sub-threads. Visiting her sister in jail, Charlotte uncovers a secret ‘Star Chamber’ organized by a cabal of renegade judges, that carry out their own summary executions. In other rigged proceedings, an oligarch-conspirator angles for the position of police chief. Meanwhile, the Jewish-American gangster interrupts his mission of personal vengeance to come to terms with his traditional Jewish relatives in the Berlin diamond trade.

The very complicated Babylon Berlin left us dazzled, episode after episode. It’s been called the best TV ever produced in Germany. Its battalion of fine, committed actors impress us more than the newest American stars with their fashion-model looks. Volker Bruch and Liv Lisa Fries are two of the most exciting personalities we’ve run into lately — and that includes the Danish, Swedish and Finnish talent in the Nordic Noirs that have arrived in the last fifteen years.

We feared that Season 4 would introduce events post-Hitler, replacing the crazy extremes of the Weimar chaos with a much-too familiar conflict between Nazis and doomed resisters. Nope, in Season 4 things are still in flux. Gereon Rath, Charlotte Ritter and others still hope that sanity can be salvaged — a sentiment that plays like gangbusters these days. We’re told that the expected Season 5 will take the story right up to the major shift in power, when Hitler becomes Chancellor and the entire nation commits itself to totalitarian Fascism. The show’s creators agree that that will be the place to end things.

The Kino Lorber Blu-ray set of Babylon Berlin Season 4 is one of the best-looking TV shows we’ve ever seen — in most reviews, the rich cinematography ends up being described as ‘Noir.’ The set presents the season’s 12 episodes on three discs, in full HD and widescreen.

The handsome music score is dominated by the wild antics at the big clubs. Some nice pop songs in period style come through as well. In season 4 the Moka Efti runs a gigantic, exploitative Dance Marathon, in a style not unlike that described by  Horace McCoy. A YouTube music video excerpt gives viewers a slick preview of one of the series’ catchy songs:   Ein Tag wie Gold. Lotte Lenya could have had a hit with that melody.

Sure, a measure of musical anachronism is present. The drums are more like ’40s swing music … but the spirit of total abandon is in play, big-time.

The disc producers include an English-dubbed track. Don’t go for it, read some subtitles instead — the original German voices and dialogue make a big difference.

Although listed under their German production companies and now the MHZ Choice label, the entire series for Babylon Berlin up through Season 4 is now available on Blu-ray. We expressed our enthusiasm for the earlier seasons in a CineSavant Column from March of this year. We’re not sure what the series’ streaming availability is at the moment (we push hard media, Pilgrim) but the Kino Lorber purchase links as of right now are as follows:

Babylon Berlin Season 1 & 2 (on Blu-ray October 2020)

Babylon Berlin Season 3 (on Blu-ray November 2020)

Babylon Berlin Season 4 (on Blu-ray October 2024).

The only extras on the Season 4 discs are some promotional trailers. When gathering images from the web we noticed a lack of graphics depicting the Nazi brown-shirts, the beer-hall riots and the anti-Jewish street action, which is understandable. But we did find the one shot of Volker Bruch in his street-Nazi uniform.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Babylon Berlin Season 4
Blu-ray rates:
TV series: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent German + optional English track
Supplements:
— Trailers.
Deaf and Hearing Impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: Three Blu-rays in one keep case
Reviewed: October 5, 2024
(7208baby)