(Note: It isn’t Group C’s week to post or comment—I just got carried away.)
When asked to reflect on the serial form of Dark, I thought immediately of the series of episodes that makes up a season, and the seasons that make up a TV show (Odar and Friese). But while looking back at episode 1, I realized there’s another type of serialization that links film to manga: serial images.
Manga marks the transitions between panels with space, using the gutter; film transitions between shots through time, without pause. I think this distinction affords manga a more involved reader, who is invited to make comparisons and pace their interpretation as meaning allows. Watching film is a more passive experience, as reading goes, and so tends to rely on tacit suggestion to lead viewers toward connections and conclusions.
Either way, both forms speak the same language of closure—the act of putting pieces together into a whole, or moving from observation (observing the pieces) into perception (perceiving the whole).
There are two moments in the first episode that speak to nuclear energy as the backdrop to Dark, as Martina discusses in her post below. In the first example (approx. 7:36–7:50), we see Jonas bike to a stop light, look at the nuclear plant in the distance, look at a “vermisst” (missing) sign for Erik Obendorf, and leave the frame:
A first reading would probably consider this simply an excuse to give new information to viewers. The scene sets place and time for the show: Winden, a town with a nuclear power plant, and 2019, the year local boys begin to mysteriously disappear. And what else do we do at a stoplight, anyway, besides observe our surroundings absentmindedly?
On closer reading, though, we recognize that a connection is being made between the nuclear plant and the missing boy. Once the shot/countershot sequence becomes clear, we see that the camera is centering Jonas as the subject in the scene. The camera appears to be tracing his thoughts, and we, as subjects ourselves, are meant to follow. We are meant to position ourselves in the scene, looking at nuclear energy first, and only then at the mysterious goings-on, and to look at these data up-close and in real time.
And then, well, we leave the frame and continue on our way.
The second example follows a similar pattern (approx. 35:40–36:04). The camera follows Jonas as he looks at the nuclear power plant in the distance:
The nuclear plant is cast as an omen for what’s about the unfold: Mikkel’s disappearance, followed by the many events in the future (with effects on the past) and in the past (with effects on the future) that compose the show’s plot. More explicitly, we associate nuclear energy with the “Achtung” sign, translated to attention in the subtitles but also of course meaning danger. Nuclear energy calls for our attention because there is imminent (radioactive) danger.
What’s most interesting about this scene, for me, is the way the camera lingers for a moment after Jonas has walked out of the frame, as if signaling to us behind his back. Here, unlike in the first example, we can’t tell whether Jonas notices the sign. We’re left wondering how much he knows, or how great a sense of foreboding he feels, and at the same time are reminded of the advantage we have, able to watch and draw connections from a distance—and, as viewers, stop and replay time.
