In these times when the temptation for totalitarianism lurks, it is worth watching this program that traces a vivid glimpse of the future of the planet from having fallen under the yoke of the mother of all dictatorships.
Hitler’s Germany and its allies, the Japanese, have won the Second World War and have divided up what used to be the United States, after assassinating President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and dropping the atomic bomb on Washington, whose mythical Capitol remains only a shell In the east, the Aryan nation has established a colony, the Great Nazi State, with its capital in New York; while the Japanese have done the same in the west with the Japanese Pacific States, whose seat of government is San Francisco. The nations are separated by the Neutral Zone, which sits in the Rocky Mountains and is the most backward of all.
The chapters of The man in the high castle , or The man in the castle , which start in 1962, make an impact by showing how all that ignominy that put the world on alert when Hitler began to expand his power throughout Europe is now law, three decades ago. The Germans continue their racial hunt against minorities and unceremoniously apply euthanasia to citizens with disabilities or chronic illnesses. Not even the son of Obergruppenführer John Smith, a gringo who becomes Hitler’s highest representative in the country, is spared from this.
Despite the infamy, there is progress. Video phones are already in use, and planes very similar to the Concorde fly through the air. Meanwhile, in Berlin, embellished with impressive buildings symbolizing his status as the most powerful city, Hitler is old and decrepit, facing conspiracies to overthrow him.
In the Japanese Pacific States, for its part, the regime applies a much more cruel racial discrimination and the inhabitants enjoy the minimum rights. Cultural alienation is total: everyone is obliged to salute by bowing and sushi restaurants and studios for the practice of martial arts abound. On both sides, jazz and rock are banned, as they are seen as an offense against the dominant races.
Geopolitics is not the most peaceful. There are surreptitious tensions between Europeans and Asians, while a resistance movement, led especially by blacks, is harshly persecuted.
The fight for the annihilation of oppression intersects the paths of Juliana Crain, Obergruppenführer Smith himself, undercover agent Joe Blake and Japanese minister Nobusuke Tagomi, among other characters. Juliana, the central figure of “the good guys”, an expert in aikido from the Japanese zone, rebels against the system when she discovers a series of films in which Hitler’s Germans lose the war and the United States drops the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The films, which are none other than those we are used to seeing in historical documentaries, come from a certain “man of the castle”, which gives the series its title, and they have not only impacted Juliana, but are one of the the great motors of the resistance movement.
Alexa Davalos is Juliana Crain, who rebels against the Japanese regime that dominates in the west, upon learning about the mysterious “man in the high castle” movies.
After a series of adventures, and thanks to the expansion of the mind that she achieves through aikido and meditation, Juliana discovers that what the films show happens in a parallel reality. The Germans also know this and elaborate the multiverse theory, according to which there are not two but many more of these worlds, and they invent a machine to transport between them. All in order to steal the best of technology and military development from other places, to continue expanding their perverse system. It is also a weapon to combat the increasingly threatening resistance.
The series, created by Frank Spotnitz, who was based on the book The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick, has been received favorably by critics. Rotten Tomatoes, for example, has given it ratings of up to 95 percent approval.
That good star has accompanied her in her fourth and final season, released in mid-November. In the new episodes, Juliana has managed to go beyond the other reality, that is, the one known by history, and she has come into contact with Smith, who here is a modest insurance salesman in any town. Will he be able to unravel the key for the rebels to topple the Nazis? The answer lies in Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming service , which has scored a hit with this ambitious production.