The first episode starts with a direct quote from one of the great German philosophers, alongside Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, who have all played their part in each Season of ‘Dark’. This time it is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860):
“Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.”
”Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
(Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms)
For Schopenhauer, human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. Albert Einstein quoted his view, originally expressed in his essay “On the Freedom of the Will“, that:
“a man can do as he will, but not will as he will.”
This is as close a succinct description of the events that we have witnessed in the last two seasons of ‘Dark’ as you could probably get in one sentence. That the genius who discovered the Theory of Relativity and the resultant theoretical consequence of time dilation was an admirer of the philosophy of Schopenhauer is of course no coincidence.
For Schopenhauer is credited with one of the most profound opening lines of philosophy: ‘The world is my representation’. Ever since Plato the greatest minds have struggled with a seeming eternal schism between the world of phenomena and appearance, that is ‘outside’ of us and the internal mental processes that construct that world and give us our reality. How do we know that what we construct as our reality is a true image and is really what we think it is?
In ‘Dark’ both Jonas and Martha keep referencing the ‘glitch in the matrix’ and in this first episode we get to visit another matrix. This matrix is an alternative world in which another Martha exists. It is the same but different. It is a feeling that one has, or a remembrance, when in a new situation that is vaguely familiar (which we refer to as deja-vu), that this is a similar world but with subtle yet significant differences. One could say that this world is another representation. How would one know the difference?
The alternative world in ‘Dark’ is a clear example of the famous Allegory of the Cave (yet another cave?!) used by Plato (not a German philosopher) to explain the real and the appearance of the real and the possible ‘glitch in the matrix’ that is the sense of deja-vu that both Jonas and Martha have already been feeling about their perceived reality since the start of Season 1. Plato has Socrates describe a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality. One of the prisoners has help and breaks free from his chains. Then he is forced to turn around and look at the fire. The light of the fire hurts his eyes and makes him immediately want to turn back around and:
“retreat to the things which he could see properly, which he would think really clearer than the things being shown him.”
In other words, the prisoner initially finds the light (representing the truth, an alternative truth or reality) very challenging to see and so does not want to pursue it. However, after his eyes adjust to the firelight, reluctantly and with great difficulty he is forced out of the cave and into the sunlight, which is a painful process. But the prisoner has progressed past the realm of the firelight, and now into the realm of sunlight. The first thing he would find easiest to look at is the shadows, and then reflections of men and objects in the water, and then finally he is able to look at the sun itself which he realises is the source of the reflections.
Plato referred to those in the cave as ‘prisoners’ and this would apply equally well to those living in both Winden’s and to the ‘travelers’, who are locked into cycles of 33 years. We are now familiar with the significance of multiples of 3 and the hermetic symbolism contained within the triquetra. And this is exactly how Episode 1 proper, starts, in very familiar territory.
We witness a multiple of three. Three males and three different stages of existence as allowed within the existing taxonomy of time travel for Jonas: a young boy, a mature man and an older version of the same person. Here in the flesh is the answer to the ravenous Sphinx’s riddle. Remember the myth of Oedipus? The myths of Greece feature everywhere in ‘Dark’. The men we have just seen are perhaps an (alternative?) male version of the ‘Erinyes’ or ‘Furies’ who were goddesses of vengeance and retribution who punished those who committed crimes against the natural order. The unnatural order in ‘Dark’ being the infinite circle without beginning or end demanding greater and greater human sacrifice to create and to destroy.
The mature version stands before the painting ‘The Fall of the Damned’ by Peter Paul Reubens hung as a devout centrepiece at the hermetic altar of ‘Sic Mundus’ where Adam once sat pontificating interminably about the machinations of time travel. This time it is a female voice who questions our free will and our ability to deny fate straight from the philosophy of Schopenhauer. The look on the face of this strange creature is of recognition and repulsion. He is holding a lantern, they all are. He throws the lantern at the painting and it burns. They all throw their lanterns and ‘Sic Mundus’ burns. One is reminded of Adams’ words that to create one must first destroy but this is pure destruction. A foreshadowing of the impending apocalyptic auto-da-fe. Where Prometheus brought ‘fire’ or science to help humanity the new Promethean’s bring real fire. Having picked up the technical drawing of the time machine before the conflagration, this modern ‘fire’ will now destroy us completely.
Alternative Martha, takes Jonas, via her portable device to the other Winden, where Jonas is our tour guide. He goes ‘home’ to find it occupied by the Nielsen family and a torn picture illustrates that Ulrich is no longer with Katharina. He is with Hanna who is pregnant. Ulrich leaves and we see him and Charlotte at the police station. Ulrich is in charge and Charlotte is deaf. Strikingly we see Woller who in this world has both eyes, but his left arm is missing. A part of him is still gone. The balance is undisturbed in the Universe. Jonas goes to the school looking for Martha. But she does not recognise him. They have not yet met in the other world. Or have they? He follows her, desperate for her to remember. But how can one remember the future? Deja-vu?
Once again, she is performing as Ariadne, but the words from the first version in Season 1:
‘‘The spinning wheel turns, round and round in a circle. One fate tied to the next. The thread, red like blood, that cleaves together all our deeds. One cannot unravel the knots.’’
are now rearranged in her new monologue to give a completely different meaning, a much darker prophecy. This time the back scenery of a blood-red cave and the deep red slash down the left-side of the face of the girl in the audience and Kilian, (the replacement for Bartosz in this world) foreshadows something far bloodier and far more horrific. This is not now a mythic love story. The words spoken by Kilian, especially, are more reminiscent of ‘Paradise Lost’ by Milton and the cataclysmic Fall of Adam and Eve from ‘Paradise’ and not, the mythic endeavours of heroic Theseus slaying the Minotaur and escaping the labyrinth with help from a highly resourceful Ariadne, who has fallen in love with Theseus. In my review of Episode 5 of Season 1 I have already discussed the links between Ariadne, Theseus, the Labyrinth and ‘Dark‘.
‘Dark’ is metamorphosing into mythic love story, a tragedy and a horror film. Another triquetra. Although one will find quite a few of the first two in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ an epic narrative poem published in 8 A.D. ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ is a good example. It was also a play within a play that Shakespeare used in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ which also involves much love, an alternative supernatural world and a dash of horror.
Jonas tells Martha the date November 4th and its significance. But she knows nothing of this. He is bemused. On going to the cemetery he sees Regina Tiedemann’s grave and meets Peter who is the priest of Winden. Jonas asks if his father is buried here. Peter does not recognise the name. Jonas then realises why he is in this alternative Winden, to stop their apocalypse.
We jump to the world Jonas has left and it is September 1987 and a home intrusion is taking place. The youngest iteration of the Furies enters Bernd Doppler’s home and asks for the master key, old Bernd thinks he is joking. They all enter, and the mature Fury takes out a wire cheese cutter and proceeds to murder the old man in his wheelchair. It is horrific.
Martha is meeting Killian in the woods, but Jonas is waiting for her. He explains to her that they know each other and that everything that is happening now has happened before:
‘It’s deja-vu. Or a glitch in the matrix’’
And he smiles. Martha is beginning to understand.
Suddenly, the rest of the group turn up and head for the caves. Mikkel is not with them. As they near the caves they hear the mechanical noise emanating from the cave. They run and Martha is separated. As she turns around, she sees her blood-soaked other-self. It is strikingly reminiscent of that shocking scene from the horror film ‘Carrie‘. Martha runs. They all run to the bunker and the lights in Winden flicker once more. Inside the bunker that familiar rip in space and time opens, and a body, drops through it, again. It is a dead and eyeless (Oedipus?) Mads Nielsen.
Jonas is by his ex-home when an old woman appears from the dark. She explains that Mikkel does not travel back in this world and so he, Jonas, will never be born. But this world will still be destroyed by him and by her. Jonas recognises her meaning. She must be Martha, but much older.
Finally, we jump to September 1888 on a wet stormy night where Martha has arrived at the Tannhaus factory. She enters and there is Jonas working on a new time machine. Although it could be Dr Victor Frankenstein working maniacally in his laboratory to cheat life and death. He is shocked to see her. He has no idea that this is not his Martha. She explains who she is and that she is there to help find the ‘origin‘ and:
‘‘The one thing that is the beginning of everything’’
And the end of everything?
Jonas has no idea what she means, but the Creature that Dr Frankenstein created in his laboratory (his ‘Adam’), would have understood Martha, perfectly.
Marc Barham
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