The Survivors — A Netflix Series
A Deep and Poignant Dive into the World of Sorrow, Grieving, & Rage
Introduction
The Survivors is perhaps the most ‘understated’ narrative on Netflix.
For a complex and poignant tale. It chooses not to ‘over-sell’ itself. It kind of lurks on your screen, as you wade through tons of Netflix offerings, waiting to be discovered.
Its title is not fancy clickbait as other competing narratives. The cast is not stellar except for its protagonist who may tickle the fancy of fans of the Rings.
The narrative is based in a fictional village — Evelyn Bay in south-southeast Tasmania, a few miles away from Hobart, and its characters are ordinary looking folks that speak in a strange accent, and who live in the back of the beyond.
The surroundings are not cosmopolitan or urban and nor do the characters don their fancy make-ups and sexy wardrobes.
Yes, the narrative, based on the work of Jane Harper, can also be seen as a ‘whodunnit’ for there is a killer and there are victims, but this story keeps the ‘whodunnit plot’ as just one of those peripheral strands that allows for understanding a tapestry — of living with loss, tragedy, and mourning.
Do not watch this series if you are wanting to see only a detective solve a crime and catch a killer …
The Canvas of Tasmania
Tasmania is one of the most beautiful places that I have been to — its rugged, its wild, its cold, it’s dangerously replete with reptiles and animals, but most importantly it retains a sense of mystery and intrigue.
The narrative leverages its haunting coastlines in the south — where the scraggy cliffs meet the stormy waters from the Antarctic ocean — creating terrifying portals of this life and beyond.
The southern rugged cliffs, the sea-caves, the stormy waters all remind you of the fragile connect between life and nature — quite reminiscent of Weir’s classic — Picnic At Hanging Rock — which was based across the Tasman waters outside Melbourne.
While the comparisons to Picnic on Hanging Rock were powerful and seductive for both the narratives begin with missing girls, The Survivors saga comes to its own identity over the six episodes.
The other associations on Caves are to do with E Forster’s novel — A Passage to India and of course Plato. The subterranean caves, replete with stormy and strong tidal currents become the canvas for deep inner work and a sensing of inner secrets, inner fears, and terrors.
I am putting some of my favourite photos here as opposed to the series.
Contrasted to the Caves are the sylvian surroundings of the village with its beautiful homes and its fantastic vistas of vast skies, natural beauty of the lands and oceans — the series keeps moving from one to the other and never lets you forget one for the other.
Central Theme
What makes The Survivors poignant is that the narrative unflinchingly works with grief and sorrow. There are really no comic reliefs, there are very few scenes that remain unscathed of sorrow, and its cast of characters emerge as complex humans — strong, infallible, and yet deeply vulnerable and flawed. No one including the killer is one-dimensional. Each and every character in its cast of 15 central characters gradually touch your heart with their struggles with pathos.
Key Themes
I do not wish to share the plot, but some of the themes of the intricate narrative included in the central theme of grieving and sorrow:
a) Why do we worship the alpha males and the hyper masculine men, and their redemption narratives? What do this slew of admiration and worshiping do to other men and more critically to women?
This question is not just for the Australian society alone — which often ends up reducing masculinity to sporty, tough, competitive, and heroes without looking at other aspects of living — I think this question is true for all societies.
As the narrative evolves, one discovers how mothers and lovers collude in creating this masculinity without looking at the darker aspects of hyper-masculinity or supermen.
But the most interesting insight is what the saga of masculinity does to mean in the first place.
b) The second theme is around loss and grieving and offers a rich array of coping resources, gifts, and stances that women selflessly offer. This is a narrative about under-stated and yet heroic women who deal with death of children and loved ones, who cope with weak and flawed men and who emerge as complex — sometimes ugly but as loveable.
I must say that my eyes were moist and wet, as a multi-layered approach to grieving is worked through by each of its characters. The subtle differences allow for these women to ‘share’ their grief — as each one has a slightly different stance and way of engaging with it.
Perhaps it is quite true that Grieving is as much as communal process as it is private and individualistic.
c) The third theme that the narrative plays with is gendered lens of the society — and why men and their world continue to be in the hegemonic center of collective consciousness and why women and girls pale in significance.
In a post-Epsteinian world, where the victimized girls and women never have a voice, as men like Trump and Company choose to recalibrate the system and play their political plots — the narrative raises this question as well.
The narrative offers this central question — When and how do we choose to listen and dignify the voice of the girl victim?
The woman who tries to listen to a victim’s voice is labelled as a Trauma-tourist — a new term that I learnt for myself, while she believes in how listening to the voice may actually offer many a gift to the bereaved community.
d) Last but not the least, the narrative explores ageing as a process — something that we cannot run away from as ageing loved ones wither away in front of us. How do we engage with this process? How and why do we run away from it?
There are other themes that the series does justice to — but I would like to keep this blog concise and short. Once you watch it — do write in and let me know what you thought of it.
