And the performances are strong enough, particularly Sewell’s, that the show easily glides over any stretches of uneven pacing or dialogue. Even when the show is jumping between an assassination plot in San Francisco, Juliana’s perilous excursion in Canon City and Smith’s plotting over in New York, it holds together remarkably well. When two individuals intersect, their meeting feels organic and generates genuine suspense, rather than seeming forced or unnecessary. The first six episodes (all those provided to press ahead of release) consistently surprise in how they deepen those characters and weave their journeys together. Meanwhile, Joe reports back to Obergruppenführer John Smith (Rufus Sewell), a ruthless if complicated Nazi official who’s shockingly compelling not as a clear-cut villain but as a conflicted man forced to embody the inhumanity of an oppressive regime.
Little does she know that this flight brings the full force of the government down on poor Frank, whose subsequent detainment and torture sends him down a radical path of his own.Īlong the way, Juliana encounters New Yorker Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank), a Nazi agent posing as a resistance fighter, and the pair become close as they square off with a hilariously mannered bounty hunter (Burn Gorman) and attempt to rendezvous with Trudy’s elusive contact in an Old West-esque town called Canon City. Obviously, possession of the film is a capital offense, but Juliana feels she’s obligated to carry out her sister’s failed mission and so she takes off into the neutral zone, bent on reaching the Rockies. flags and eventually declaring victory over the Nazis. Impossibly, the footage seems real, showing the Allies conquering Axis forces in key locations, raising U.S. And upon viewing the film, she’s thrown for a loop – created by the subversive Man in the High Castle, it depicts an alternate history (in other words, ours) in which the U.S. When Juliana’s sister Trudy winds up dead for the crime of transporting a forbidden film reel titled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, it falls to Juliana to find out exactly what illicit activities her sister was involved in. Though some may argue Transparent is the more flawlessly executed Amazon original to date, this is without a doubt its most ambitious and inventive. In truth, The Man in the High Castle‘s visual storytelling trumps its narrative thrust any day – the bleak, bombed-out setting is gorgeous to behold, and there’s so much packed into every scene that one is tempted to hit pause and rewatch. Spotnitz and company are masters at world-building, and they’re meticulous in their approach to fleshing out this conquered shell of the United States, from large-scale developments (the creation of massive Nazi headquarters that towers over the New York skyline) to bizarre, minute details (a child reading a Ranger Reich magazine).
When characters greet each other with “Sieg Heil” and an enthusiastic Nazi salute, what’s most chilling about the gesture is how ordinary it feels. Some did try to fight, with little success, but the vast majority have simply accepted life under enemy occupation as the new normal. In another, characters dance around the fact that a mass genocide of the Jews took place shortly after the end of the war.)
(In one chilling scene, a highway cop casually explains that snow-like ash falling from the sky emanates from the nearby hospital, where the state incinerates the sick and injured. government and utterly crushing the country’s willpower. For the most part, civilians have adjusted to life under enemy rule – fascist symbols and ideology have completely permeated the basic fabric of American life, and most spend their days trying to convince themselves that nothing has really changed, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s soon revealed that the war was lost once Hitler gained possession of an A-bomb and detonated it over Washington, wiping out the U.S. flags are riddled with swatstikas, the few surviving Jews have been driven deep underground, and a brutal police force executes any accused dissidents with brutal efficiency.
Meanwhile, American society has capitulated to the totalitarian rule of German and Japanese forces. The prospect of his imminent death adds new complexity to the already-fragile truce between Japan and Germany, and many – including Japan’s trade minister (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) and a senior Nazi official (Carsten Norgaard), who conspire against their respective governments in hope of maintaining peace – fear that his passing could usher in a new era of calamitous bloodshed. In The Man in the High Castle‘s chilling reality, the year is 1962, and the Führer, though alive, is old and graying.