•
Rating:
Everything concludes with an unexpected moment of decadent poetry, a first-person diary of a scientist who, observing a giant stranded on a beach, its decomposition, and how the population interacts with the colossal limbs, ultimately tells of the transience of man, flesh, and civilization (The Drowned Giant).
Before that, one of the most effective dystopias, even though set in a rhetorically futuristic scenario, involves the cruel imposition of not having children for humanity that lives for centuries but no longer knows the joy of seeing their offspring grow. If and when it does, it's illegal, in the fear of eyes cautiously looking around, in rickety houses at the foot of a threatening tumult of skyscrapers (Pop Squad).
This second season thrives on heterogeneity, both in content and the extremely varying quality of the episodes, but it is less colorful and varied compared to the first. It almost always settles on photorealistic scenarios, dark futurisms that compromise human integrity, eroding emotions through various eugenic impositions, machines that inevitably escape control in a persistent man-robot relationship. There is the quest for eternal life and the curse of those who possess the gift, almost a self-imposed exile to not grant that perennial seed to those who crave its miraculous effects (Snow in the Desert).
Some passages are particularly light and amaze with the lack of depth (The Tall Grass), others tastefully and somewhat mischievously but also banally revisit the most worn-out places of tradition (All Through the House), while others slide into truly unjustifiable similarities: robots that do not respond to commands and begin hunting humans return almost identical, even in very different contexts (Automated Customer Service and Survival Kit). In a few cases, the aesthetic choices are artistically significant (Ice), but in most cases, visual realism prevails, adapting to the less amusing and entertained, more thoughtful and gloomy tone of the season.
They seem like morsels of Black Mirror, but with such a slight specific weight that they become, in some cases, indigestible or otherwise useless, when there is no skeleton of meaning that is truly stimulating. A fundamental aporia, a moral turmoil, a clear and sharp gaze are needed to give weight to these sketches, which are much fewer than before (from eighteen to eight episodes).
The underlying idea is good, the micro-narratives are perfectly integrated into the often somewhat detached and distracted viewing context that occurs on platforms. But brevity in duration should not coincide with brevity of ideas.
Loading comments slowly
