The Man on the High Castle Online

Credits

Cast

Alexa Davalos every bit Juliana Crain; Rupert Evans every bit Frank Frink; Luke Kleintank every bit Joe Blake; DJ Qualls every bit Ed McCarthy; Joel de la Fuente as Inspector Kido; Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Nobusuke Tagomi; Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith; Arnold Chun as Kotomichi; Carsten Norgaard every bit Rudolph Wegener

Idiot box Series Review

It'due south 1962 and all is well in America. At least as far as the Nazis are concerned.

Most of the United states of america is safely in the Fuhrer's collection of sycophant states—a New World outpost of fascism called the Greater Nazi Reich. After Frg dropped the bomb on Washington, D.C., and won Globe War 2, Germany and Nippon divvied the former United States betwixt them—the Third Reich claiming the Neat Plains and everything east, the Empire of the Ascension Sun pocketing the Pacific time zone. A sliver of land—the Rocky Mountain region, essentially—is classified as a neutral buffer zone between these ii "friendly" empires. And with Hitler'due south time every bit Fuhrer coming to a shut, there'southward a sense inside the Nazi regime that it'southward time for another state of war—one that will pit Japan against Germany, with the winner claiming the once proud U.South. of A.

Only non anybody is content to goosestep their days abroad. In that location are those who imagine a much dissimilar America—those who believe that somewhere, somehow, such an America actually exists.

Indeed, such realities are locked away in mysterious home movies and newsreels—mayhap evidence that the Nazified globe everyone lives in may not be the only world possible. People in the resistance laissez passer effectually these movies like holy relics, using them to cling to their desperate struggle and sometimes to recruit others along the mode.

And even equally the at present frail Adolph Hitler tries to assemble these films for himself, another, more mysterious man—Abendson, the Man in the Loftier Castle—has his own archive. He'due south seen the future. All sorts of futures, actually. They're all pieces of a puzzle, Abendson believes. And if he can just figure out how to put them together, mayhap their world could be a very dissimilar place, too.

A Foreign, New World

Amazon's The Man in the High Castle is based on the novel of the same name by the belatedly Phillip Chiliad. Dick, Hollywood's favorite science fiction writer. (Bract Runner, Total Recollect and Minority Report are among the eleven movies based on his work.) High Castle is arguably Dick's virtually ambitious tale, earning him the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. But while it may be a literary triumph, it also transports readers into a grim land filled with manmade terrors.

The same can now be said for the idiot box adaptation. Perhaps more so. Like Dick did, the show's creators want to make viewers experience, to some small degree, the horror of living under a brutal, fascist regime. We see people beaten and tortured, sometimes to death. Citizens are casually shot in the street. In ane of the pilot'south near spooky scenes, people watch as ash flutters down like snowflakes. A policeman explains that information technology's coming from the hospital. "Tuesdays they burn cripples, terminally ill, the drags on the land," he says.

Few of us—hopefully none of u.s.—would want to live in the real world painted by The Man in the High Castle. And it's a pretty uncomfortable place to about visit as well.

Episode Reviews

The Human in the Loftier Castle: Dec. 15, 2015 "The Tiger'southward Cave"

Joe, a 1-fourth dimension resistance operative secretly working for the Nazis, brings a valuable, alternative reality newsreel to the Nazi authorities in New York. But after watching his employers kill many people forth the way, including (he thinks) his girlfriend, Juliana, Joe decides he wants out. "This isn't the man I desire to be," he tells SS Obergruppenführer John Smith. In reality, Juliana is still alive, having met the Human in the High Castle himself. Meanwhile, Tagomi, merchandise government minister for the Pacific States of America, meditates and has his own vision of an alternate reality—a San Francisco "ruled by Americans, walking freely, shouting, laughing."

Juliana may be alive, but the resistance even so seems determined to kill her. She's shot twice—once with a tranquilizer gun, once with a real one—and is thrown in the body of a car. She escapes, clutching a her bloodied, injured arm. Her main pursuer, a resistance leader named Gary, shoots two Japanese guards (finishing off one in common cold claret and fairly graphically), but a woman is also killed in the melee. We see her lying on the basis, her neck covered in blood, coughing and gasping her final.

In alternate reality newsreels, we come across characters executed at indicate-bare range, bodies of soldiers and civilians, and an atomic bomb that obliterates San Francisco (including charred "shadows" of victims incinerated by the blast). A bomb blows upwardly on a ship, killing everyone on board. A homo smashes a window, injuring his mitt in the process. (We see blood on drinking glass shards and, afterwards, the bloody wound itself.) Someone imagines (or has a vision of) flinging herself in front end of a bus. In that location's much talk about an assassination attempt on a Japanese crown prince.

A crate filled with coin besides contains a few girlie magazines (zip critical is shown). Someone mentions how good San Francisco's "hostess bars" are. People drink alcohol and fume cigarettes. Characters say the f-word and the southward-word once each. They too say "b–tard," "h—," and misuse God'due south name four times (including three pairings with "d–n").

The Man in the High Castle – November. twenty, 2015 "The New World"

Joe meets with Mr. Warren, who heads the resistance in New York City, and is told to drive a truck filled with "java makers" to Canon Metropolis. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Juliana's sister gives her a copy of "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy."

Both of these acts result in death. Juliana'southward sister is almost immediately shot, and Nazi Brownshirts assail Warren'south business organisation. Several people are gunned down in a shootout there, while several more are summarily executed. Warren himself is taken away to be tortured. (We meet his bloodied torso being striking again and again with a baseball bat, then get dumped in the street.) People talk about grotesque forms of torture (pulling out toenails, crushing testicles, etc.) Ash falls from the sky, created, nosotros're told, by euthanizing crematoriums at a nearby infirmary.

A omnibus to Canon City is filled with "undesirables," according to a woman sitting next to Juliana: "Incorrect color, wrong organized religion, wrong bed partners." (The adult female then steals her bag.) We hear racial slurs. Unmarried couples live together. There's talk of Chi and fortune-telling. People drink beer and hard liquor at a bar. They say the f- and southward-word three times each. Other profanities include "h—," "d–northward," "b–tard" and iii misuses of Jesus' name.

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been office of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He's written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mount Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He's married, has two children and a neurotic canis familiaris, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Experience costless to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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