Netflix’s Dark and The Inevitability of Life: Ramblings

I’m not sure if you’ve watched Netflix’s Dark. It’s a German TV series that came out three years ago. The story follows the tangled fates of a group of people in a little town in Germany called Winden. It all began with a boy’s disappearance and led to the unraveling of a mystery more complicated than anything I’ve come across in a long time.

I love how beautifully the story is told. With the amount of time-traveling the characters do, I experienced astoundingly little confusion watching the show. They did such a great job piecing everything together and anchoring us so we’re not lost in time too.

If you intend to watch it, please be warned that there’re spoilers in this post even though this isn’t a review. This post is a reflection that came to me after watching the show.

In the show, the characters are stuck in a 33-year loop that’s constantly repeating. Helpless, they’re pushed around by circumstances, unable to save their loved ones from an apocalypse caused by an accident at the nuclear power plant.

Now, I’m not even going to talk about the time-traveling. I mean, how can a daughter give birth to a mother? My take is everything happened simultaneously. That’ll explain why the characters can travel between eras right? But hey, as I said, this isn’t a film theory post.

Art imitating life

Weeks after watching all three seasons relatively quickly (you won’t want to wait too long between episodes less you forget who’s who), the novelty of the time-traveling has (somewhat) faded away, the town of Winden became a distant (fond) memory, but one thing stuck.

The fact that the characters couldn’t help doing what they did and who they turn into.

Claudia’s conversation with her younger self always plays out the exact same way.

Jonas was adamant that he wouldn’t turn into that weird, disfigured, manipulative old man who wants to end the world. And Martha never imagined that she’d kill Jonas.

But they always do. It’s as they said, our needs and desires motivate our actions.

It’s these elements that stuck with me.

Is a life lived, or does life unfold?

How much of our actions do we control? Lesser than we expected. A neurology study found that decisions are made 11 seconds before we become conscious of our choices. And epigenetics studies have shown that the experience of our ancestors can have an effect on the person we become.

How much of our desires and fears are our own? How much of our personality was as a result of our ancestors’ circumstances?

I’ve been feeling two very distinct pulls in my mind – the struggle between who I am and who I want to be. Who I am is imperfect, often weak, and very insecure. Who I want to be is the stereotypical protagonist – strong, decisive, and spontaneous.

Ironically, what I am isn’t the problem. Wanting to be someone I’m not is the problem because I’m literally fighting my biology and upbringing. No wonder life can be such a struggle if we don’t make peace with ourselves.

Watching how the characters in Dark got pushed around by a combination of personality, circumstances, and motivation reminded me of this internal struggle.

They’re stuck in an imperfect version of reality they want to change. The thing is, events have already been set in motion and their results waiting to unfold. Over and over. They can’t change anything because it has already happened.

I can’t help wondering if the writers intended to mirror the script to reflect the… helplessness of life.

The helplessness of life

By helplessness, I don’t mean not being able to do stuff or help ourselves. I mean to not be in full control of our thoughts, actions, and especially, the results.

In case you feel you can control your thoughts, let me remind you that most of us don’t know what we’ll be thinking about five minutes from now. If we could control our thoughts, meditation would come naturally to all of us. But meditation requires practice, focus, and discipline.

As for our actions? Well, I’ve been saying I need to exercise for years but I don’t do it. Obviously, we can control our actions for the most part – like eating when we’re hungry and doing the laundry when the basket’s full. Even then, we procrastinate.

We’ll all be physically fit, emotionally healthy, wealthy, successful, and “perfect” if we have full control of our actions. However, it’s not surprising that we’re not. After all, what are actions controlled by? Thoughts.

Thoughts are shaped by both nature and nurture. Once again, not something we can control.

And then we throw in the actions of others. It complicates things so much more. I can try my best at an interview, but I can’t help if my interviewer finds my lack of makeup unprofessional and my nervousness as a lack of ability.

How in control are we? How many things are we inadvertently fighting against in life just because we want things to be different?

The inevitability of events

In the characters in Dark, I see us. Tossed around in the currents of life, powered by our past, present, and hopes for the future.

Young Jonas and Martha wanted to save their worlds, old Jonas wanted the loop to end, and old Martha wanted to save her son. Tannhaus wanted to save his family. Claudia wanted a regular, happy life for her daughter.

You and I, we’re driven to create a stable life. Maybe you want to be a better mom. Or you want your blog to flourish. Perhaps you just want to clear your credit card debt. Our struggles are different, but the motivation is the same. We want to bend the course of events to our will. To our betterment.

Like the characters, our actions are influenced by our circumstances, disposition, needs, desires, and traits passed down for generations like tired heirlooms. We have a common goal, a pursuit of a better life, whatever that means.

We’re helpless to do otherwise, for the most part.

If we lived this life over and over, I’m pretty sure the biggest choices we made would be the same – just like what happens to the characters in the alternate world.

A surprising parallel

In the ending of the show, I came to a weird conclusion.

(Spoiler warning!)

In the show, Jonas and Martha destroyed the splintered universes by returning to the origin world to stop Tannhaus’ son from driving off that stormy night. They succeeded, and we see them turning into stardust and fading away.

In the splintered universes, the other characters experienced the fading too. It’s a beautiful world.

What an irony, that the worlds they all tried so hard to save weren’t even “real”. (Food for thought: the person we want to be or the life we want to have aren’t “real” too!)

In a possibly irrelevant revelation, I saw that by letting go of the insistence to save each other and their own worlds, Jonas and Martha found release.

It must have been difficult to accept that their realities were diseased offshoots of the origin world, but at least their tiresome struggles came to an end.

They didn’t save their worlds, or each other, or their kid, but they sure looked relieved as they faded away.

What if, we can find release too – if we stopped insisting that things go our way? What if we recognize that wanting things to be different creates an offshoot world of struggles and dissatisfaction? If things could be different, things would be.

That said, acceptance isn’t resignation. Acceptance is understanding. Resignation is surrender.

A strong foundation isn’t one without flaws, but one that sees its flaws, accepts them, and work on them. Resignation is seeing its flaws and letting them slide.

Acceptance

Increasingly, I wonder if life is just a series of events set in perpetual motion, a result of lives intersecting, interacting and diverging.

In a life full of variables, maybe all we can work on is ourselves. Even then, we’re not in full control.

After all, our internal programming (a result of our unique nature and nurture exposures) makes our decision before we even become conscious of it.

We can put in the effort – but we can’t control the results, especially with all the variables. Hell, we’re not even in control of our reactions. We can’t choose to be happy when we’re sad or to be sad when we’re happy. The best we can do is control what we want to express outwardly.

Maybe we should stop trying to get things to go our way, for life is like a flower and can only bloom in its own time. Maybe life will happen, whether we’re struggling or not.

I hope I managed to bring my point across to you. In any case, if you love weird stories and time-traveling (I actually don’t like time-traveling stories but Dark was really compelling), Netflix’s Dark is one hell of a show to watch.

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