User Reviews

I loved the book with its beautiful writing, fascinating main characters, and imaginative storyline. The scenes in this episode with the girl and her father are well-acted and are reminiscent of the book. The rest of this opening episode is well done but focuses on the dark and desperate situation in the French coastal town, Saint Malo. I would have liked more early on of the past (pre-war flashbacks) and less of the present (1944 post D-Day) to pull us into the characters and their histories more at the start. I'm reminded by the tone of this episode of the 1960s American TV show "Combat" where American GIs and Nazi soldiers would frequently find themselves spending an entire one-hour episode in a dangerous stalemate fighting over one farmhouse or town building. Anyway, it's off to a good start and I hope that it picks up the pace a bit in the next episodes and fully realizes the wonderful storytelling of the book.

This show is all over the place so far. Set design is fantastic and some of the acting is great. However, being adapted from a well loved book, which I haven't read, the dialogue is at some points so ridiculously forced that I can't really get immersed into the show. I get that introducing the characters in the first episode is important, but at some points it's almost literally "I'm (fill in the blank) and this is what I do." One of the key examples is the bakery scene. Marie walks in and sees her uncle for about 15 seconds where he proceeds to explain the whole point of what she's doing instead of letting the story naturally play out. Everything seems so forced and does far too much hand holding in assuming the audience won't be able to pick up on characters without flat out telling them what's going on. Almost every scene in the first half of the episode is some variation of the bakery scene in terms of character introductions. I think I may be being too harsh because other aspects of the show are great and I'll continue watching. But to me these aspects are pretty hard to ignore. However, l love the fact that they actually used visually impaired actors who did their job quite well. 6.5/10.

I'm late to finally watching this series and as of this first episode, it doesn't seem so horrible to me. The acting is perfectly good, the characters are engaging, the premise is interesting, the plot zips right along without dead spots, and the special effects are convincing. Just pick anything at random from Netflix and you'll see much worse.

The plotline with the eeeevil Nazi maniacally and sadistically searching for a legendary gem with supposedly magic powers is maybe a bit Indiana Jones-ish, but I assume that's taken from the well-regarded novel on which this series is based, so that can't be the problem.

The first episode did its job, getting me interested in learning more about the two main characters, particularly Werner, and continuing with the series.

For those of you who have spent many years watching the lackluster acting that emanated from Hollywood "stars" well, "All The Light You Cannot See" is a must see.

Every single character can and does SEEM REAL, SEEM AUTHENTIC, make it seem like you are there with them.

If you are tried of lousy Hollywood acting while everyone onscreen sells cigarettes in every scene by constantly smoking, THIS Netflix blockbuster is for you.

I cannot say enough about Netflix process of finding actors and actresses compared to Hollywood (which, apparently, acting was never a qualification).

Aria Mia Loberti, a never acted before find, sifted from thousands of auditions by the Netflix director, is one of the truly gifted actors of my lifetime. Every minute of her performance seems as real as any person sitting next to you would feel.

Louis Hofmann, also, in his role as reluctant but brilliant Nazi, is PERFECT. REAL action again! Not Hollywood blather and smoke.

Contrasting the innate "good" of Loberti and Hofmann we have Lars Eidinger, the truly evil incarnate. Lars scares me every time he is on screen and represents the monstrous reality of the German Nazi to the world in true reality.

A true blockbuster. Thanks to everyone at netflix.

For now, I have read the first half of Anthony Doerr novel. An exercise exactly for be in theme about Netflix series.

The expectation - not accurate adaptation because the difficulty is obvious and the architecture of novel imposed more a serious series not only four episodes. . But fair translation of its spirit . Magnificent, intense.

The first episode, indeed, with some not very pleasant differences by images offered by book, makes that. But the serious pillars are the actors and photography.

Beautiful performances and amazing scenes. The encouraging first step is just made and this represents a real good point of series. Sure, maybe the chronologic order of events were little more inspired. But, it is only the fair episode. And , not to ignore, a Netflix production.

I'm finished with people judging an entire series on the first episode. Also, books are books and movies are movies. The reasons for them being different are obvious. We have kind of standard fare here in the portrayal of the Nazis, especially the guy after the jewel. He has to be portrayed as a butcher, I guess, but we sort of know that from history. The first hour tells us about the young woman, her uncle, and her efforts to survive and get her messages out. Her blindness makes all this incredibly difficult. I know that others will be moving onto the scene as she moves forward. There is a kind of cheap narrative hook at the end. Of course, serialized things have been doing that for 140 years or so. The girls is believable, although her ability to survive without help is stretching things a bit. Hugh Laurie as her uncle certainly will come into play. I was really taken with the young man after watching all three seasons of "Dark," where he is one of the principle stars. I am intrigued to see where this goes. I read the book about four years ago, and while I remembered being engaged, I don't have specific memories. For the impatient--take a bit of time and have a look at this in its totality.

Episode 1 is beyond disappointing :(

I was so looking forward to this and it's just a letdown.

Generally cheesy acting that feels like a high school drama production. Sets look cheap, and there's no real sense of the time period, and no real sense of the trauma of war.

So far, poor adherence to the book. Uncle Etienne looked/behaved nothing like the source material. Werner has yellow hair. The sequence of Reinhold finding Marie had none of the book's tension or build-up, and was frankly anti-climactic. Did the show's creators even read the book?

Everyone bizarrely speaks in a British accent, although some actors at times randomly adopt a sort of German-sounding twang. Would it have been so hard to hire actual French and German actors? I kept thinking that unless I'd read the book, it would be so clunky to follow what was going on and who these people are.

The only highlight were the scenes featuring child Marie. She was a delight to watch.

I can't continue with this series as I don't want to ruin such a beautiful and treasured book.

This series is adapted from the brilliant book of the same name by Anthony Doerr.

The casting is terrible and the acting/dialogue is equally as bad. Some of the dialogue is so obviously bad it's almost laughable. It looks like Netflix have done their usual thing of under developing an idea, throwing huge amounts of money at it and hoping it works. Unfortunately, yet again, it hasn't.

On the plus side, the sets are beautiful. 10* for the set designers I suppose.

Please, do yourself a favour and don't watch this, at least until you have read the book, which is an absolutely outstanding read..

This is a brilliant book & I had high hopes for a film adaptation but Netflix have ruined it. The lead German actor is reasonable, if dull. Lars Eidinger is brilliant ( see Babylon Berlin) but the so-called French female lead isn't French and has no acting ability AT ALL. Hard to understand the casting. So at what point did they decide not to take the French language language and acting ability into consideration? There must be hundreds of good French actresses in London /US. Do Netflix take us all for idiots?

It so very sad to see such a brilliant book brought down by awful acting. Kept wondering if it was the script-but no.

Yeah, yeah, I get it: we need light to see but yet we don't always see it. I mean... you might have called it "unseen light" or something...

I bet they thought they were making a thoughtful and revitalizing rumination on evil, morality, truth, persisting against adversity blah blah blah.

I wonder if I use the word "sophomoric" too often but this had absolutely no self-awareness at all. The lay on the attempt at lyricism and pathos with a shovel and it is not subtle in the slightest. That moment when the title becomes dialogue can be amazing but they are as premature as a high-school boy in the delivery and that is a microcosm of this simpering little flag waver.

I might have really liked this when I was 14. The way it colloquizes in a poetical, stylized way with its characters trapped in that episode of history where everything went a bit cuckoo bananas (I think it was just one time; no others ever get into movies).

But it is relentless with pseudo-intellectual drivel and overtones of smugness. The flashbacks with the little blind girl are especially saccharine (quelle petite garce!) and the extended metaphor of the light is so heavy handed...

Everything you need to make sure your serious story isn't taken seriously is there. There's isn't a single character that is both likable and developed. Very sentimental and none of the candour that made Game of Thrones credible; it just talks down to you.

Finally, this cannot be said enough:

It's NOT OK that it's in English.

It's NOT OK that it's in English.

It's NOT OK that it's in English.

That cast a shadow over the whole thing and it wasn't great to begin with.

Unintriguing, flaccid and simply irksome to watch.

I wish that the light had never found this.