November's Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman -- BARBARIANS: The Wolf and the Eagle Teutoburg Forest, 9 AD

 

This post is written by our 

monthly correspondent Lee Liberman

The wolf is the earthy forest threat; the eagle emblematic of Roman power. These are the symbols (notes 3,4) of a more empathic and personal story of pillage-and-plunder than you’ve seen in other series about the ancients. BARBARIANS, now streaming on Netflix, beats many blood-and-guts epics and harnesses your emotions to its galloping close, like a beautiful poem. It has plenty of sturm & drang, ‘Mists of Avalon’ tropes, and urgent, compelling drama. But showrunners Arne Nolting and Jan Martin Scharf have higher purpose — the rescue of an historic moment from Nazi fake news (note 1). 

For story, we follow friends and poignant love triangle (above from l) Arminius (Laurence Rupp),Thusnelda (Jeanne Goursaud), and Folkwin, (David Schütter), from childhood into maturity and a famous battle. It’s a tale conceived around feuding local Germanic tribes (‘barbarians’ to the Romans) who join forces to throw off Roman rule. The battle of Teutoburg Forest 9AD was a singular loss and insult to Rome, ending its expansion in Germania/Germany. The Nazis used it to magnify German prowess and claim Arminius an ancestor to Hitler. 

Of the three leads, only Folkwin Wulfspeer (above) is imaginary — village swordsman of humble folk, with smarter, gruffer intensity than Brad Pitt’s Achilles. Schütter is oddly arresting as the jock who spears and thinks, even more so than Arminius, whose story this is. Folkwin is lover of Thusnelda, whose controlling father, a Cherusci elder, is priming her for sale to the Chatti chief for five horses. Meanwhile, Arminius had been taken as a child and raised to a position of authority by renowned General Varus, whom he has now joined in Germania (below, Varus, l, Arminius, r). 

According to historians (notes 1,2) the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD became an ideological rallying point for the Nazis and Arminius an inspiration for far-right extremists. Primary scriptwriter Andreas Heckmann set out to remedy this Reich-wrong, spinning suspense and a love story quite apart from battle history, which has been avoided because of its Nazification. In 1875, after the founding of the German Empire, a mighty statue of Arminius was unveiled in the forest (below). He is depicted as a colossus who saved the ‘purity’ of German blood (Barbarians ‘pure’?) from Roman conquest. (Too bad the swastica, a pagan symbol of life, is too far corrupted by the Nazis for rescue.) 

Arminius is convincingly acted here by the dark-haired Mr. Rupp, not a Nordic German ideal. As young son of the Cherusci tribal chief, he is given away in a transaction to keep the peace. Ari, renamed Arminius, is raised personally, lovingly, in Rome by Varus, governor of Gaul, to become a knight (‘Rome will be your mother and your father now’). (Below, Varus, played by Gaitano Aronica). 

It is young-adult Arminius’s struggle that gains painful traction as he re-engages with the father who had allowed him to be taken,

then endures a second betrayal that tears him apart. How do you process betrayal by someone who loves you, dreams for you and with you, and whom you love in return? Arminius steps up, but his choices (and also Folkwin and Thusnelda’s) are fraught with rage to redress grief, treachery, and the rank transactional nature of existence. You see Arminius juggle his loyalties — to his tribal origins and to the ordered Roman world in which he has been educated and ennobled (Arminius below: he is Roman armored, Cherusci painted). 

The series begins with Thusnelda being offered to Chatti chief, Hadgan, a greasy guy with bad teeth who complains her pelvis is too narrow. A bully, Hadgan is way out of his league here—Thusnelda talks to the gods and is a lethal warrior; she’ll dispose of him later. But for now, the Romans demand cows and grain — a resumption of their former depredations. Thusnelda escapes to Folkwin where they make love and plot to hunt bird — the Roman golden eagle standard— though there will be blood. The theft will prove that Rome can be beaten; the battle approaches. 

Note that the Barbarians speak German and the Romans in orderly ancient Latin. Although subtitled, the effect adds authenticity; you are time-warped to a period when motley tribes of Germania (the Cherusci, Bructuri, Marsi, Sicambri, Chauci, Chatti) chanted in circles, wearing weird get-ups and painted, convened in ‘the Thing’ (group assembly), fought each other over ‘fistfuls of wool’, but cowered before steely Rome— its brutality ruthless, arrogant, elegant. All these wild folk and authoritarian leaders feel familiar —like people you know. And their business and feuds are as compelling as our own idiot mishegas.

(Spoiler alert for the following paragraph: 

If you plan to view Barbarians, watch the series first 

and then come back to finish this article.) 

The tribes are cleverly maneuvered into a great army and humiliate Rome on the battlefield. Exactly how it is carried out is completely absorbing, despite gruesome bits best ignored. (Above: artist’s impression of the battlefield as tribesmen wear down the Roman column.) It unfolds with the beauty of a great symphony with rain and fire that thunders as affectingly as any climax in Game of Thrones — and less showoff-y. Thusnelda shouts at Varus “You are the army of the dead”. The look on the General’s face as he surveys his unimaginable loss (three legions, 15,000 men, a great river of steel) and his own trust betrayed, is devastating. He calls for the removal of his armor and dies on his sword —the eagle has fallen. (Below, archival)

Note 1. 

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