Barbaran/Barbarians (Review)
Nov. 11th, 2020 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAka the one about the battle of the Teutoburg Forest. Overall: not an instant classic, but succeeds in what it sets out doing in an entertaining fashion.
For all that the Romans are the hands-down bad guys of the tale offers a treat to anyone wanting to hear (subtitled) dialogue in Latin. (All the Roman characters speak Latin, while the Cherusci, Marbodians etc. speak modern German. Good choice, especially since honestly we have no idea what they spoke and how it sounded like. The earliest documents in early medieval German are from many centuries later.) Now I'm always fascinated on how different Latin sounds depending on the speakers' original language. (For example, in the famous West Wing scene when President Bartlet starts ranting at God in Latin, it took me a second to get what he was doing, simply because when yours truly learned those words in a German school, they naturally were pronounced quite differently.) Here, the Romans are played by Italian actors, so the result probably sounds closer to the original than anything else I've heard so far. (And they must have been coached, because these are the first "Romans" I've ever heard to pronounce "Caesar" "Kae - sar" - my Latin teachers just told us that this was the original pronounciation, just as Cicero was Ki - Ke -Ro, and then went on to use the traditional soft c along with the rest of us.)
(Another linguistic question is which non-Roman original name to give to good old Arminius. Because we don't know what his original name was. "Herrmann" was something either Luther or Johannes Aventinus came up with in the Renaissance, and it became so thoroughly associated both with nationalistic propaganda and a thousand spoofs - "Herrmann the German" - that you want to avoid it. This series settles on "Ari" as his original pre Romanization name instead.)
Okay, so much for the language aspect. You can tell the budget mostly went into the final battle in the last episode, because the locations are mostly the same Cheruscan village (even when it's supposed to be a different village) and the same Roman camp. (In reality, not only were there different camps but Varus himself would have spent at least part of the time the plot covers at Trier (today mostly known as Karl Marx' birth place), where the Roman governors had their seat. But constructing an actual Roman-German city is expensive, even with GCI. Anyway, the series made a virtue out of necessity because the true location star are the forests, and of these, we see plenty in every episode. And that's thematically fitting, not just because that's where the famous battle takes place but because the sheer amount of forest was what the Romans kept being freaked out about when describing the area later. Not since the various Robin Hood shows have I seen an such a woody series, and honestly, it's a good look.
Characters: the pilot isn't centred on Arminius/Ari at all, who shows up very late in the game, but on Thusnelda, and this turns out to be significant in that while Arminius gets plenty of screen time later, Thusnelda really keeps being treated as much as the lead of the series as he is. Every review I've seen so far makes the comparison to Lagertha in Vikings, and while I bet the series creators were keenly aware of Lagertha's popularity, they do manage to make Thusnelda her own person, not just a clone. (As there really was a Thusnelda - about whom we know even less certain facts than about Arminius, but we do now some -, let me add this is also the hands down most interesting version I've come across so far.) I'm especially intrigued that the series about two thirds in lets her father Segestes observe "we're far more alike than you care to admit" - without her refuting it, which, given that Segestes is the frustrated schemer of the tale and Thusnelda the heroic freedom fighter (who, however, has to learn about compromises to forge alliances) - adds yet another layer.
Arminius/Ari is indeed presented as the trailer made me hope he would be as torn between two worlds, though given that the Romans are introduced as imperialists exploiters from the get go, the choice he's got to make is rather obvious. The series tries to make it harder by giving him a personal relationship with Varus the historical originals did not have; it makes Varus his foster father after child!Ari and his little brother (Flavus, though the name isn't given yet in the series; presumably they keep this for season) have been taken as glorified hostages/foster children by the Romans. (It also lets Varus negotiate this with Ari's father Sigimer in flashbacks; historial Quinctilius Varus was nowhere near the German lands at this point. He may or may not have been in Raetia, but afterwards he was procurator in Africa and in Syria.) This is also as good an emotional explanation as any for Varus' trust in Arminius at a key point late in the story. What I hadn't anticipated was how the relationship is used when it comes to the straw that brakes the camel's back, i.e. the key turning point which makes Arminius decide on turning against Rome. Surprisingly, it's not one of the various injustices committed against his people - though these play a role in building up turnmoil in him - but the reveal that fostering him was always intended by Varus to give the Cheruscans a Romanized leader, that Arminius has risen as far as he could get within Roman ranks (which is, as in history, to the rank of knight and leader of various auxiliary parts of the army), could go no further in Rome because despite being a Roman citizen and knight, his "barbarian" birth will always be associated with him, and that hence his future lies with leading his tribe in a Rome-friendly fashion. Now, on the one hand, making the "you're supposed to lead your people in a Rome-friendly fashion" bit news to Arminius is one of the series' more ahistorical bits, because that was the whole point of him being taken as a hostage/to be fostered in the first place. Exactly this was done with Juba II., the King of Mauretania whom Cleopatra's daughter Selene ended up marrying and who, like her, had been raised in Rome. Ditto with Herodes Agrippa, as watchers of I, Claudius would know. On the other, from a storytelling pov, making the feeling of personal betrayal by Varus and rejection by Rome (in the sense of being regarded as a second class Roman no matter how hard he assimilated) the turning point, not primarily a "I can't bear to watch my people being exploited and oppressed!" motivation, which is given to Thusnelda instead - makes Arminius a far more complicated figure than the freedom fighter of post-Luther tradition. It also means that having accomplished his goal (and thus burned all his bridges, of course), he will still be of two worlds, because you can't just reverse a life time of assimilation and being raised Roman; hence him monologueing to a dead Varus instead of celebrating with the rest in the final scenes.
The one notable character not based on anyone historical is Folkwin Wolfsspear, who is a childhood friend of Thusnelda's and Ari's, and is Thusnelda's lover through most of the show, which made me conclude he's a redshirt walking since Thusnelda has a historical marriage destiny. But no, in a neat use of surprise trope, Thusnelda and Arminius get engaged and married as a political decision because romanized Arminius isn't popular among the tribes and they have a revolt to organize, for which marrying Thusnelda will heighten his credentials, and Folkwin is on board with this. Unfortunately, the "arranged marriage starts to become real" trope, which I like, is then followed by the threat of a more traditional triangle/rivalry thing on the horizon in the very last episode, but maybe they'll surprise me again if this gets a second season. Which would be nice, because this is a triangle depicted with much affection in every direction, and everyone keeps saving everyone else's lives at different points. Threesome, I say!
Supporting cast: Thusnelda's parents, Segestes and his wife, are by far the most interesting, because while they are antagonists, you can see where they are coming from, and the narrative gives them both emotional lives beyond their ambition. There's a certain historical plot point involving Segestes and Thusnelda years after the battle in the Teutoburg Forest which I would want to watch these actors play.
The Romans: Varus himself is basically your avarage colonizer who in his own mind is a benevolent patriarch unable to understand why anyone else doesn't see it this way, even while ordering one brutal measure after the other. His affection for Arminius is real, as is his utter inability to understand what's actually going on in his foster son. There's a tribune who is initially antagonistic to Arminius but bonds with him somewhat later over discovering they both served under Tiberius in Pannonia, but by and large, we're talking Stormtroopers of the Empire type of characterisation. (Or, you know, Brits in American movies about the war of independence. Or Germans in - well, okay, not WWII, but WWI.) And of course by the end of the season, they're all dead. Considering the series took care to establish Ari was taken/fostered along with his younger brother, I expect that if/when there's a second season, we might get more detailed Romans via Flavus, who after all served with Germanicus against Arminius & Co.
The acting: Jeanne Goursaud is great as Thusnelda (though I wish they'd let her put on a few pounds, she looks a bit thin to me), Laurence Rupp speaks Latin like a pro when Arminius is with the Romans and does the inner conflict and brooding very well, David Schütter as Folkwin is the cheerful blond daredevil to Ari's brooding brunet man of thought, and Bernhard Schütz - who played Wolfgang's dastardly father in Sense8 - is as mentioned excellent as Segestes. Varus gets played by Gaetano Aronico, who also is the only one of the Romans who gets to do character stuff (and does it well), but all the other actors of Romans have to speak Latin as well, so, go team!
Greatest concession of cinematic tradition: two of the four Cheruscans who sneak into a Roman camp in the pilot do so via using the latrines. No sooner are they out of said latrines that they look just like Luke, Leia and Han did after emerging from the trash compactor on the Death Star. Magical dry cleaning of waste: not just for science fiction anymore.
In conclusion: not a must, but if you want a historical show about only temporarily united rebels going up against the Empire and winning (for now), have a look.
For all that the Romans are the hands-down bad guys of the tale offers a treat to anyone wanting to hear (subtitled) dialogue in Latin. (All the Roman characters speak Latin, while the Cherusci, Marbodians etc. speak modern German. Good choice, especially since honestly we have no idea what they spoke and how it sounded like. The earliest documents in early medieval German are from many centuries later.) Now I'm always fascinated on how different Latin sounds depending on the speakers' original language. (For example, in the famous West Wing scene when President Bartlet starts ranting at God in Latin, it took me a second to get what he was doing, simply because when yours truly learned those words in a German school, they naturally were pronounced quite differently.) Here, the Romans are played by Italian actors, so the result probably sounds closer to the original than anything else I've heard so far. (And they must have been coached, because these are the first "Romans" I've ever heard to pronounce "Caesar" "Kae - sar" - my Latin teachers just told us that this was the original pronounciation, just as Cicero was Ki - Ke -Ro, and then went on to use the traditional soft c along with the rest of us.)
(Another linguistic question is which non-Roman original name to give to good old Arminius. Because we don't know what his original name was. "Herrmann" was something either Luther or Johannes Aventinus came up with in the Renaissance, and it became so thoroughly associated both with nationalistic propaganda and a thousand spoofs - "Herrmann the German" - that you want to avoid it. This series settles on "Ari" as his original pre Romanization name instead.)
Okay, so much for the language aspect. You can tell the budget mostly went into the final battle in the last episode, because the locations are mostly the same Cheruscan village (even when it's supposed to be a different village) and the same Roman camp. (In reality, not only were there different camps but Varus himself would have spent at least part of the time the plot covers at Trier (today mostly known as Karl Marx' birth place), where the Roman governors had their seat. But constructing an actual Roman-German city is expensive, even with GCI. Anyway, the series made a virtue out of necessity because the true location star are the forests, and of these, we see plenty in every episode. And that's thematically fitting, not just because that's where the famous battle takes place but because the sheer amount of forest was what the Romans kept being freaked out about when describing the area later. Not since the various Robin Hood shows have I seen an such a woody series, and honestly, it's a good look.
Characters: the pilot isn't centred on Arminius/Ari at all, who shows up very late in the game, but on Thusnelda, and this turns out to be significant in that while Arminius gets plenty of screen time later, Thusnelda really keeps being treated as much as the lead of the series as he is. Every review I've seen so far makes the comparison to Lagertha in Vikings, and while I bet the series creators were keenly aware of Lagertha's popularity, they do manage to make Thusnelda her own person, not just a clone. (As there really was a Thusnelda - about whom we know even less certain facts than about Arminius, but we do now some -, let me add this is also the hands down most interesting version I've come across so far.) I'm especially intrigued that the series about two thirds in lets her father Segestes observe "we're far more alike than you care to admit" - without her refuting it, which, given that Segestes is the frustrated schemer of the tale and Thusnelda the heroic freedom fighter (who, however, has to learn about compromises to forge alliances) - adds yet another layer.
Arminius/Ari is indeed presented as the trailer made me hope he would be as torn between two worlds, though given that the Romans are introduced as imperialists exploiters from the get go, the choice he's got to make is rather obvious. The series tries to make it harder by giving him a personal relationship with Varus the historical originals did not have; it makes Varus his foster father after child!Ari and his little brother (Flavus, though the name isn't given yet in the series; presumably they keep this for season) have been taken as glorified hostages/foster children by the Romans. (It also lets Varus negotiate this with Ari's father Sigimer in flashbacks; historial Quinctilius Varus was nowhere near the German lands at this point. He may or may not have been in Raetia, but afterwards he was procurator in Africa and in Syria.) This is also as good an emotional explanation as any for Varus' trust in Arminius at a key point late in the story. What I hadn't anticipated was how the relationship is used when it comes to the straw that brakes the camel's back, i.e. the key turning point which makes Arminius decide on turning against Rome. Surprisingly, it's not one of the various injustices committed against his people - though these play a role in building up turnmoil in him - but the reveal that fostering him was always intended by Varus to give the Cheruscans a Romanized leader, that Arminius has risen as far as he could get within Roman ranks (which is, as in history, to the rank of knight and leader of various auxiliary parts of the army), could go no further in Rome because despite being a Roman citizen and knight, his "barbarian" birth will always be associated with him, and that hence his future lies with leading his tribe in a Rome-friendly fashion. Now, on the one hand, making the "you're supposed to lead your people in a Rome-friendly fashion" bit news to Arminius is one of the series' more ahistorical bits, because that was the whole point of him being taken as a hostage/to be fostered in the first place. Exactly this was done with Juba II., the King of Mauretania whom Cleopatra's daughter Selene ended up marrying and who, like her, had been raised in Rome. Ditto with Herodes Agrippa, as watchers of I, Claudius would know. On the other, from a storytelling pov, making the feeling of personal betrayal by Varus and rejection by Rome (in the sense of being regarded as a second class Roman no matter how hard he assimilated) the turning point, not primarily a "I can't bear to watch my people being exploited and oppressed!" motivation, which is given to Thusnelda instead - makes Arminius a far more complicated figure than the freedom fighter of post-Luther tradition. It also means that having accomplished his goal (and thus burned all his bridges, of course), he will still be of two worlds, because you can't just reverse a life time of assimilation and being raised Roman; hence him monologueing to a dead Varus instead of celebrating with the rest in the final scenes.
The one notable character not based on anyone historical is Folkwin Wolfsspear, who is a childhood friend of Thusnelda's and Ari's, and is Thusnelda's lover through most of the show, which made me conclude he's a redshirt walking since Thusnelda has a historical marriage destiny. But no, in a neat use of surprise trope, Thusnelda and Arminius get engaged and married as a political decision because romanized Arminius isn't popular among the tribes and they have a revolt to organize, for which marrying Thusnelda will heighten his credentials, and Folkwin is on board with this. Unfortunately, the "arranged marriage starts to become real" trope, which I like, is then followed by the threat of a more traditional triangle/rivalry thing on the horizon in the very last episode, but maybe they'll surprise me again if this gets a second season. Which would be nice, because this is a triangle depicted with much affection in every direction, and everyone keeps saving everyone else's lives at different points. Threesome, I say!
Supporting cast: Thusnelda's parents, Segestes and his wife, are by far the most interesting, because while they are antagonists, you can see where they are coming from, and the narrative gives them both emotional lives beyond their ambition. There's a certain historical plot point involving Segestes and Thusnelda years after the battle in the Teutoburg Forest which I would want to watch these actors play.
The Romans: Varus himself is basically your avarage colonizer who in his own mind is a benevolent patriarch unable to understand why anyone else doesn't see it this way, even while ordering one brutal measure after the other. His affection for Arminius is real, as is his utter inability to understand what's actually going on in his foster son. There's a tribune who is initially antagonistic to Arminius but bonds with him somewhat later over discovering they both served under Tiberius in Pannonia, but by and large, we're talking Stormtroopers of the Empire type of characterisation. (Or, you know, Brits in American movies about the war of independence. Or Germans in - well, okay, not WWII, but WWI.) And of course by the end of the season, they're all dead. Considering the series took care to establish Ari was taken/fostered along with his younger brother, I expect that if/when there's a second season, we might get more detailed Romans via Flavus, who after all served with Germanicus against Arminius & Co.
The acting: Jeanne Goursaud is great as Thusnelda (though I wish they'd let her put on a few pounds, she looks a bit thin to me), Laurence Rupp speaks Latin like a pro when Arminius is with the Romans and does the inner conflict and brooding very well, David Schütter as Folkwin is the cheerful blond daredevil to Ari's brooding brunet man of thought, and Bernhard Schütz - who played Wolfgang's dastardly father in Sense8 - is as mentioned excellent as Segestes. Varus gets played by Gaetano Aronico, who also is the only one of the Romans who gets to do character stuff (and does it well), but all the other actors of Romans have to speak Latin as well, so, go team!
Greatest concession of cinematic tradition: two of the four Cheruscans who sneak into a Roman camp in the pilot do so via using the latrines. No sooner are they out of said latrines that they look just like Luke, Leia and Han did after emerging from the trash compactor on the Death Star. Magical dry cleaning of waste: not just for science fiction anymore.
In conclusion: not a must, but if you want a historical show about only temporarily united rebels going up against the Empire and winning (for now), have a look.
