All the Light We Cannot See is a Historical Fiction four-part miniseries. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name and is directed by Shawn Levy for Netflix. It premiered on November 2, 2023.
The series is set in the European theater of World War II. It follows two teenagers whose fates converge in the French seaside city of Saint-Malo as Allied bombardment sets it ablaze. Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti) is a blind French girl who, along with her locksmith father Daniel (Mark Ruffalo), flees Paris to live with his reclusive uncle Etienne (Hugh Laurie). Werner Pfennig (Louis Hofmann) is a German boy with a talent for engineering, who is eventually recruited into the Wehrmacht and hears the illegal radio broadcasts from Marie-Laure and her family. Meanwhile, a Nazi jeweler (Lars Eidinger) seeks Marie-Laure as he believes she holds the Sea of Flames, a diamond rumored to bestow immortality on its owner but misfortune on everyone else.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Alternate Ending: The book ends decades after the war, with an elderly Marie-Laure receiving the model house from Jutta. The series ends after St. Malo's liberation, with Werner and Marie-Laure being separated and Marie-Laure throwing the Sea of Flames into the sea. By also excising one of the book's last scenes where Werner is killed by a landmine, the adaptation leaves it open that the character could have survived.
- Adaptational Dye-Job: Marie is auburn-haired in the book, but is played by the brunette Aria Mia Loberti. Similarly, Werner has white hair in the book but is played by the blond Louis Hofmann.
- Adaptational Personality Change: Both versions of Etienne begin the story as shut-ins, but the show's version of him is less delicate than that of the book and is more of a snarky man of action. Notably, he doesn't take days to come out of his room and meet Marie-Laure, and is already committing seditious acts for the French Resistance well before Manec dies.
- Adapted Out: Frederick, Werner's school friend who is too gentle for the Institute and is eventually sent away after sustaining brain damage from a beating, is not present in this adaptation. The Institute's brutality is established by Werner being hazed.
- Artistic License – Military: In the final episode, von Rumpel mounts a hand grenade on the door to Marie-Laure's radio room after finding out where she lives. As he prepares to blow it open, he tells the latter to step away as the grenade will be filled with shrapnel. However, the grenade he's using is the German Stielhandgranate M24, which was actually a concussion grenade that lacked the shrapnel effect of the more common fragmentation grenades used by the Allies. While a small amount of steel fragments would have still been released by the grenade's thin casing, it was most certainly not filled with shrapnel.
- Artistic Title: The show's title sequence consists shots of the model Daniel has built for Marie-Laure, culminating in the title in Braille then English.
- Anachronic Order: Like the source novel, the book jumps between the ongoing battle of Saint-Malo and the events in Marie-Laure's and Werner's lives from the preceding decade that lead them there.
- Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: The first episode ends with the villainous von Rumpel pointing a gun at Marie and demanding he tell her the Sea of Flames' location. The episode ends on a gunshot. The next episode clarifies that he didn't shoot her, because Can't Kill You, Still Need You, but he's not above manhandling her to try and obtain information.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Lampshaded by Daniel to his daughter: "The Nazis have chosen your birthday to invade Paris." They spend it helping smuggle valuables out of the Museum of National History before fleeing Paris themselves.Daniel: This is one birthday you'll never forget!
- Bittersweet Ending: Marie-Laure's family are dead and Werner is taken as a prisoner of war, leaving her alone in the world. However, Saint-Malo is liberated by the allied forces and most of the Nazi officers, including von Rumpel, are killed. And with Werner apparently being Spared by the Adaptation, there's the possibility of him and Marie-Laure meeting again after the war is over.
- Boom, Headshot!:
- Marie-Laure finally disposes of Von Rumpel by shooting him in the head.
- In Episode 3, Werner kills his commanding officer with a shot to the head.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You:
- Von Rumpel doesn't shoot Marie-Laure at the end of episode 1 because he thinks he can get the location of the Sea of Flames out of her.
- Werner's superior says he could execute Werner for hiding Marie-Laure's broadcasts, but won't because there's no other radio operator in the town that could point them in her location.
- Death by Adaptation: Uncle Etienne survives the war in the book, but dies here.
- Death by Irony: Von Rumpel spends several years searching for the Sea of Flames, hoping that it will save him from his terminal illness. He's killed by Marie-Laure shortly after finally discovering it's hiding place inside Daniel's model, and even falls down dead right next to it.
- I Have Your Wife:
- Werner's boss Müller forces him to uncover Marie-Laure's location by reminding him that the Nazi Party knows where his sister Jutta lives and can have her die a painful death if they so choose.
- Von Rumpel threatens a museum curator for the locations of the jewels in the museum by telling his subordinate to shoot the curator's family if he doesn't return home in half an hour. He then asks the curator where, specifically, the Sea of Flames is. The curator tells him about Daniel instantly, but is locked in the vault for his troubles.
- Lighter and Softer: The series skims over some of the darker elements of the book. Frederick, Werner's friend from the Institute who was systematically tortured by the commandant, is written out entirely, with only a few parts of his ordeal rolled into Werner's story. It also only briefly touches on Werner's days as part of brutal anti-partisan operations in occupied Europe, where his unit accidentally kill an innocent mother and child in Vienna. The story ends on a far lighter note, too, with Werner's death by stepping on a landmine and Jutta's sexual assault at the hands of Soviet troops omitted entirely.
- Related in the Adaptation: In the book, Mme. Manec is Etienne's Kindly Housekeeper. In the show, she is his sister and thus also Daniel and Marie-Laure's relative.
- Shameful Strip: Werner is forced to strip nude in front of the doctor at the Institute so the latter can measure his body and determine if he is sufficiently Aryan. The experience brings him to tears and establishes the brutality of the school.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Müller shoots out the lock to 4 rue Varborel. After killing him, Etienne hides the Nazi's presence from the blind Marie-Laure by claiming the lock was broken.
- This Bed of Rose's: Von Rumpel shelters in the abode of a prostitute. His cancer treatments have left him with no libido so she instead nurses his injuries and listens to his exposition on the Sea of Flames and his search for Marie-Laure for the audience. Knowing that she'll be considered a traitor for servicing the Nazis, she gives up Marie-Laure's location in hopes that he will get her out of Saint-Malo.
- Timeshifted Actor: Child actors play Marie-Laure and Werner as children.
- Translation Convention: This is World War II and the characters are implicitly speaking French or German, but it is all rendered as spoken English.
- Water Torture: Ruthless Nazi von Rumpel does the "dunk their head in seawater" version to Marie-Laure as he demands information on the Sea of Flames. She pretends to have drowned for a minute before striking him and escaping.
