(First off, I’m aware this is a bit of a thread bump but I just finished the last episode and I wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere. Indulge me)
I loved this – thought it was incredibly stylish. I particularly loved the Obergruppenfuhrer Smith character – basically an all-American family guy who happened to be a Nazi. Despite the dark threats to Joe’s wife/children half way through the series, you were heartened by the arc of his dealing with his son’s illness and I was cheering for him by the end. That’s one of the main themes of the series – how will good people act when they’re put into different situations? None of the main characters are inherently ‘bad’ people but they all do questionable things at times.
Where did the films comes from? I am familiar with PKD and his tendency to go down very bizarre wormholes, but I don’t think you need to suspend disbelief too much for this one; there’s talk of time travel / alternate realities but I think it’s far simpler than that. The films are simply fiction produced by an unknown artist – a “what if” scenario exploring the idea of alternative endings to the war (Ironically like the Amazon TV series exists IRL). Perhaps the artist is the ‘man in the high castle’, perhaps not. When Frank sees himself shot, he sees a likeness of himself – a “there but for the grace of God” sort of thing.
The Fuhrer wants the videos, partly because he’s now an old obsessive living in a remote mountain lodge, but partly because he understands the strategical benefit of looking at the world in another way. He can’t literally see the future through the films, but he uses the imagined world to help him better understand his own – which is surely why anyone reads literature?
/ramble
