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Review: The Little Drummer Girl (2018)
I had really high expectations for this miniseries because Park Chan-wook was directing it. It was pretty good, but there was one thing that bothered me during the show.
I would still recommend it as a fun thriller miniseries with great looking cinematography and a mostly solid story. Spoilers.
Story
The story moved at regular pace that kept me interested. I liked this pace and I think it went well with the directing style. There were some instances when I felt that some things were explained away too easily, but I accepted that spending less time on them would help the story move at the pace it needed to move at. For example, I felt that Salim revealed the truth to Marty a little too quickly, but if he didn't, the story would've dragged a bit.
In general, the entire story was interesting. I don't know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Europe, but the story gave audience members enough information to grasp what was going on.
My biggest and possibly only issue in this show was the romance between Gadi and Charlie. Perhaps it was the age difference that distracted me and prevented me from believing in their love. I had a hard time believing they had steamy sexual attraction for each other right from the moment they met on the beach. In the last few episodes, I did feel some chemistry between Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgard when they were arguing about Marty having Salim and Anna Witgen killed, and by the end of the miniseries, I truly felt that Charlie and Gadi had strong feelings for each other, but I couldn't see it as anything other than platonic friendship.
Production
Cinematography
Again, I had high expectations for the cinematography because it was directed by Park Chan-wook. I am by no means a sophisticated film critique, so I am only going to roughly describe the types of shots I found aesthetically pleasing.
Some shots were made from "stretched" angles, which forced me to focus on something specific.
As perspective seemed to be one of the themes, there were instances when the camera shifted focus between two parties. However, I found that it was often done in a way that was very noticeable, so it didn't come off as gracefully as I would've expected.
I really liked several scenes when we saw two characters doing separate things in the same space though.
The ways that the camera followed a moving object was also rather aesthetically pleasing. Of course, I can't show that in a screenshot, but these scenes involved the camera moving along curves that I thought were nice to watch.
The cinematography was helped a lot by really beautiful architecture and bold costume colours. Though a lot of the buildings were more brutalist and drab (e.g. made of concrete and such), I thought they were very interesting in their designs.
And because many of the buildings were more drab in colour, most of the bold colours came from costumes and props, which I'll talk more about below.
There were some scenes where Park Chan-wook showed some more surrealist scenes. Such included the scene when Charlie was making advances towards Gadi, but then hallucinated that she was being watched by Marty's team.
There were some scenes in which Salim was speaking or acting directly to the viewer. However, there was some sketchy CGI in these scenes that was noticeable because I was holding this show to a higher standard.
Costumes
Most of the clothes did not have strong features that evoked the feel of the 70s, as I usually might've expected. The clothes that characters wore were almost always bold, solid colours. In addition, I noticed that often, characters either wore the same or completary colours.
Here's a scene where all of the characters were wearing red or green, and even the cars were red.
Architecture
I thought that the buildings featured in this show were absolutely beautiful and a treat to watch. Here were some of my favourite building shots.
Music and sound effects
I didn't notice the background music and sound effects too much, but I can say that they didn't distract me from the story.
One thing that I did remember was an event that happened near the very beginning. In the background was sound that was evocative of a clock ticking, but was not actually a ticking clock, and the frame panned to a clock. I just thought that use of "noise" without the actual sound was interesting.
Acting
I don't really know what an Israeli accent sounds like, so I can't say whether the actors' accents were correct.
The main issue I had with acting again had to do with Gadi and Charlie. For example, in the first couple of episodes, Charlie had made sexual advances towards Gadi. Gadi was supposed to be attracted to her, but had to force himself to stop out of professionalism. However, I didn't feel such sexual attraction, nor did I feel any hesitation on Gadi's part.
Casting
The age difference between Alexander Skarsgard and Florence Pugh might be the biggest turnoff in this show for me. So I did have to point it out.
I'd also like to point out how several of the male actors are quite tall, so they actually looked quite complementary when they were in shots together.
Both Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgard are quite tall.
And Charles Dance as well.
Characters
Martin Kurtz
Marty was the mastermind of the whole operation. In general, I liked his character, even if in real life I would've feared him. On the surface, he seemed a quite kindly, humorous, and reasonable man. However, he was also calculating, drugging up Salim and using him, and then killing him after he was finished with him.
I was wary of the accent, but I came to enjoy Michael Shannon's performance as Marty. He had a "presence" in every scene that he was in. His personality was one that always stood out, whether he was happy, serious, frustrated, etc. I would say that he was probably my favourite character in the series.
Gadi Becker
Gadi Becker was the tall dark stranger who was normally good at his job except when Charlie Ross was involved. Seeing as how I had such a big problem with Gadi and Charlie's relationship, I really only found Gadi interesting to watch when Charlie was not around.
Marty said that he trust Gadi because of his doubt. While I don't know that Gadi exhibited much doubt throughout the story, Gadi was nonetheless a trusted man. As such, I would've expected Gadi to normally be a similarly calculating mind, who was only irrational when it came to Charlie.
I don't think we had enough set up to know what Gadi was like before he met Charlie. We'd only met Gadi after he met Charlie on the beach, and I assume we were supposed to believe that they had sexual chemistry right off the bat, which as I've stated, I did not feel.
In addition, I could not feel Gadi falling in love with Charlie at all. He was very professional at first, pushing off Charlie whenever she wanted to come onto him. They seemed to grow closer after Charlie got angry at Marty for killing Salim and Anna Witgen. After that, Gadi took her to his home and they had sex for the first time. While I get what the story was going for, it didn't come off as convincing for me. I felt that the argument between Gadi and Charlie was good, and it showed their passion and how they butted heads over such an incident, but because I never felt romantic chemistry between them, I felt that Gadi and Charlie had grown closer as friends rather than lovers.
Instead of being the tall dark stranger who had a soft spot for Charlie, I felt that Gadi had two modes, which were cold and unfeeling, and in love with Charlie, and these two modes did not really mesh together well to be one person.
Charmian Ross
I thought that Florence Pugh was great from a technical standpoint. She was doing everything right and I really felt like Charlie was a young, clever-ish delinquent type of character.
I'd heard great things about Florence Pugh's performance and I really wanted to love her in the role, but the first couple of episodes focused so much on Charlie's feelings for Gadi that I found it difficult to determine whether I disliked her performance, or if I just disliked the romance scenes.
I could imagine Charlie as a spy, but I just wasn't feeling it when she was being a seductress, whether it was her connecting with Gadi, or with Khalil.
That being said, I still acknowledge that Florence Pugh was great from a technical standpoint. She was doing everything right. I just couldn't connect with her.
Shimon
Marty said that when God was finished making him, there was some leftover wire that was haphazardly put together which turned into Shimon. I thought this was a cute way of introducing Shimon to the team lol.
Shimon was Marty's right hand man, and tried to take after him in terms of being a calculating manager. Unfortunately, he didn't have the same level of authority as Marty (both in terms of professional rank and from a character standpoint), so he did run into issues when running his own operations, such as when Gadi ignored his orders and followed Charlie after she dropped off the car in Austria.
Ms. Bach
Ms. Bach was a member of Marty's team. She was initially tasked with extracting information from Salim under the guise of being a sort of liaison/good cop. After Salim was killed, she moved to a researcher role within the team.
Schwilli
Schwilli was a forger that worked on Marty's team. He created false photographs and other sorts of forgeries to ensure that "the fiction became reality."
Daniel
Daniel was kind of an enforcer in Marty's team.
Rachel
Rachel was a member of Marty's team who was often responsible for acting. She was the hitchhiker who lured Salim into Marty's trap, and was often sent out into the field to pass on information to Charlie.
Rose
Rose was another member of Marty's team who Charlie had actually met before she had been officially recruited as an actress. Later on, she performed more of an enforcer role.
Dr. Paul Alexis
I wasn't totally sure of Paul's role. He was an officer for some organization that Marty was working with, and would help him out in passing on information or gathering manpower. When working with Paul, Marty used the pseudonym Schumann.
Salim/Michel
Salim was a Palestinian terrorist and the youngest brother of the infamous Khalil. He had a habit of getting into whirlwind romances. Marty took advantage of this reputation and created a lover for Salim.
I did feel that Salim broke a little too easily when Marty showed him the truth of where he really was. But I forgave that because I'm sure that that might happen to many people in the real world.
Anna Witgen
Anna was Salim's accomplice and lover in his terrorist attacks. She was caught after having picked up the red Mercedes with sentax hidden in it. And later, Marty's team killed her and Salim in a faked car crash.
Rossino
Rossino was a reporter who was working on the Palestinian side. He was also responsible for coordinating recruits and attacks in Europe.
Helga Stern
Helga was another of Khalil's accomplices, who coordinated recruits and attacks in Europe. I thought that Helga was pretty annoying, to be honest. She tried so hard to be a hard bitch who was actually a fun and caring friend, but she just came off as being someone who was trying too hard in my opinion. She was killed by Marty's team by the end.
Anton Mesterbein
Anton was a Swiss lawyer who often represented radical clients. He was Salim's lawyer, and Salim would regularly send information to Anton in order to coordinate terrorist attacks.
Fatmeh
Fatmeh was Salim and Khalil's sister. After Charlie passed her training under Captain Tayeh, she was sent to live with Fatmeh and other friends. Fatmeh helped Charlie to feel like a part of the family, as she was technically Salim's widow in their eyes.
Khalil
Khalil was the mastermind of many of the Palestinian terrorist attacks. Charlie was sent to meet Khalil when she returned from Lebanon, probably because she was ok'ed by Fatmeh. Khalil built a bomb for Charlie, who would then drop it off at Dr. Minkel's talk.
In her brief interaction with Marty and Gadi, she mentioned that she believed Khalil was falling in love with her, probably through their conversations and what he thought was their shared ideologies. Marty wanted to take advantage of that, to get Charlie in to the innermost circle in order to get as many names as possible. However, through this method, we would definitely see more bombings before Khalil and his associates were eventually caught.
Anyway, Marty's plan was never to kill Khalil as he wanted those contacts. However, Khalil became aware that Charlie might've been a spy and took out the batteries in the radio, which then prompted Gati to go in and kill Khalil, as he probably believed that Khalil would hurt Charlie.
In his last moments, I think that Khalil truly did feel betrayed. He was so shocked that Charlie's ideologies might not have been true at all.
Arthur A. Halloran
He was the recruit in Lebanon who was not making progress at all. First, he tried to get Charlie to inform the US embassy of his whereabouts so that he could at least go home. Later on, he saw Charlie spying and took advantage of that to try to get ahead. However, Charlie was able to turn the crowd against him.
Chief Inspector Picton
He was an English inspector that Marty was working with to control the explosion that Khalil would build to be sent to Dr. Minkel's talk. The plan wasn't to stop the bomb entirely, as it would rouse suspicion on Khalil's side. Instead, Picton would have the bomb placed in a safer location so that as few people as possible would be hurt.
Though Picton only showed up for a handful of episodes, I thought he was a pretty interesting character, and a charming asshole.
Dr. Minkel
Dr. Minkel was an Israeli academic who advocated for peace. Khalil wanted to kill as many of these peace advocates as possible and that is why he targeted her talks. She died in the explosion.
Themes
Fiction and reality
The biggest theme throughout the series was turning fiction into reality. Marty believed that the predator could only be caught if the prey was as realistic as possible. As such, his team was responsible for creating a show as realistic as possible, which was why they needed an amazing actress such as Charlie.
A few times, it was mentioned that fiction was safer than reality. This was relevant to the idea that Charlie would have been safer as the former girlfriend of Salim, than as a spy.
I'll talk about this below too, but Charlie did seem to come to care for Salim as she got more familiar with her role as Salim's widow, despite never having met him. In this case, fiction was becoming reality.
Theatre
Gadi recited Salim's monologues to understand him. One of the lines was that "terror is theatre." This is true as terrorism is often meant to invoke terror, to draw attention to certain things.
In the case of Marty's team, theatre was being used to prevent terror. They were putting on a stage production for Khalil's team, and they even hired a theatre actress to play an integral part.
Near the end of the series, when Charlie had returned to England and was planning the attack at Dr. Minkel's attack, she had delivered a few extremely fake lines. First, Rossino insisted that she pretended she recognized Dr. Minkel from afar. Then, when Charlie delivered the bomb to Dr. Minkel, Marty instructed her to play out the rest of the scene. I think this was a more literal showing of how theatre was used in both committing and preventing terrorism.
Identity
Charlie said that she acted her characters by becoming them. She used the same approach when becoming a spy for Marty's team. She had to believe that she was in love with Salim, and she did sympathize with him in the end, though maybe more for the fact that she felt that Marty was treating him inhumanely.
When Charlie was preparing for her role, Gadi was often the stand in for Salim. As such, Gadi had to understand and become Salim in order for Charlie to get into her role. This seemed to be successful since, as mentioned, Charlie really did seem to at least care for Salim a little.
In one of the fake love letters between Charlie and Salim, Salim mentioned that their bodies and bloods were becoming mixed. There was also a scene in which Salim was fading out and Charlie was fading in. I saw this as a symbol of Charlie becoming more in tune with Salim's ideologies, which helped her settle in her role.
There was a brief moment when Gadi had thought that maybe Charlie had become a true Palestinian sympathizer. This did not bother Marty. He said that Charlie's alignment did not matter as long as they could use her. So whether Charlie was still acting as Salim's lover or whether she truly became a Palestinian sympathizer, she was still going through the motions that made her useful to Marty's team.
Perspective
Marty said that a night without rest was a day without perspective. While perspective was prominent as a visual theme throughout the show, I think it still made sense from a storytelling standpoint.
Before Charlie had even met Marty, she had attended a talk hosted by Michel/Salim, and possibly became a sympathizer at that time. Being a sympathizer requires seeing things from another perspective. And in her job as an actress, Charlie said that she could only perform if she lived her characters, thus seeing things through their perspective.
Overall
I think that the story telling and cinematography of this show was solid. The costumes and architecture were also great.
My problem with this show mainly arose from the acting and casting. I went through the Tumblr tags and saw that some people really liked the acting though, so I think it's just a matter of taste.
I would still recommend it as a fun thriller miniseries with great looking cinematography and a mostly solid story. Spoilers.
Story
The story moved at regular pace that kept me interested. I liked this pace and I think it went well with the directing style. There were some instances when I felt that some things were explained away too easily, but I accepted that spending less time on them would help the story move at the pace it needed to move at. For example, I felt that Salim revealed the truth to Marty a little too quickly, but if he didn't, the story would've dragged a bit.
In general, the entire story was interesting. I don't know much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Europe, but the story gave audience members enough information to grasp what was going on.
My biggest and possibly only issue in this show was the romance between Gadi and Charlie. Perhaps it was the age difference that distracted me and prevented me from believing in their love. I had a hard time believing they had steamy sexual attraction for each other right from the moment they met on the beach. In the last few episodes, I did feel some chemistry between Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgard when they were arguing about Marty having Salim and Anna Witgen killed, and by the end of the miniseries, I truly felt that Charlie and Gadi had strong feelings for each other, but I couldn't see it as anything other than platonic friendship.
Production
Cinematography
Again, I had high expectations for the cinematography because it was directed by Park Chan-wook. I am by no means a sophisticated film critique, so I am only going to roughly describe the types of shots I found aesthetically pleasing.
Some shots were made from "stretched" angles, which forced me to focus on something specific.
As perspective seemed to be one of the themes, there were instances when the camera shifted focus between two parties. However, I found that it was often done in a way that was very noticeable, so it didn't come off as gracefully as I would've expected.
I really liked several scenes when we saw two characters doing separate things in the same space though.
The ways that the camera followed a moving object was also rather aesthetically pleasing. Of course, I can't show that in a screenshot, but these scenes involved the camera moving along curves that I thought were nice to watch.
The cinematography was helped a lot by really beautiful architecture and bold costume colours. Though a lot of the buildings were more brutalist and drab (e.g. made of concrete and such), I thought they were very interesting in their designs.
And because many of the buildings were more drab in colour, most of the bold colours came from costumes and props, which I'll talk more about below.
There were some scenes where Park Chan-wook showed some more surrealist scenes. Such included the scene when Charlie was making advances towards Gadi, but then hallucinated that she was being watched by Marty's team.
There were some scenes in which Salim was speaking or acting directly to the viewer. However, there was some sketchy CGI in these scenes that was noticeable because I was holding this show to a higher standard.
Costumes
Most of the clothes did not have strong features that evoked the feel of the 70s, as I usually might've expected. The clothes that characters wore were almost always bold, solid colours. In addition, I noticed that often, characters either wore the same or completary colours.
Here's a scene where all of the characters were wearing red or green, and even the cars were red.
Architecture
I thought that the buildings featured in this show were absolutely beautiful and a treat to watch. Here were some of my favourite building shots.
Music and sound effects
I didn't notice the background music and sound effects too much, but I can say that they didn't distract me from the story.
One thing that I did remember was an event that happened near the very beginning. In the background was sound that was evocative of a clock ticking, but was not actually a ticking clock, and the frame panned to a clock. I just thought that use of "noise" without the actual sound was interesting.
Acting
I don't really know what an Israeli accent sounds like, so I can't say whether the actors' accents were correct.
The main issue I had with acting again had to do with Gadi and Charlie. For example, in the first couple of episodes, Charlie had made sexual advances towards Gadi. Gadi was supposed to be attracted to her, but had to force himself to stop out of professionalism. However, I didn't feel such sexual attraction, nor did I feel any hesitation on Gadi's part.
Casting
The age difference between Alexander Skarsgard and Florence Pugh might be the biggest turnoff in this show for me. So I did have to point it out.
I'd also like to point out how several of the male actors are quite tall, so they actually looked quite complementary when they were in shots together.
Both Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgard are quite tall.
And Charles Dance as well.
Characters
Martin Kurtz
Marty was the mastermind of the whole operation. In general, I liked his character, even if in real life I would've feared him. On the surface, he seemed a quite kindly, humorous, and reasonable man. However, he was also calculating, drugging up Salim and using him, and then killing him after he was finished with him.
I was wary of the accent, but I came to enjoy Michael Shannon's performance as Marty. He had a "presence" in every scene that he was in. His personality was one that always stood out, whether he was happy, serious, frustrated, etc. I would say that he was probably my favourite character in the series.
Gadi Becker
Gadi Becker was the tall dark stranger who was normally good at his job except when Charlie Ross was involved. Seeing as how I had such a big problem with Gadi and Charlie's relationship, I really only found Gadi interesting to watch when Charlie was not around.
Marty said that he trust Gadi because of his doubt. While I don't know that Gadi exhibited much doubt throughout the story, Gadi was nonetheless a trusted man. As such, I would've expected Gadi to normally be a similarly calculating mind, who was only irrational when it came to Charlie.
I don't think we had enough set up to know what Gadi was like before he met Charlie. We'd only met Gadi after he met Charlie on the beach, and I assume we were supposed to believe that they had sexual chemistry right off the bat, which as I've stated, I did not feel.
In addition, I could not feel Gadi falling in love with Charlie at all. He was very professional at first, pushing off Charlie whenever she wanted to come onto him. They seemed to grow closer after Charlie got angry at Marty for killing Salim and Anna Witgen. After that, Gadi took her to his home and they had sex for the first time. While I get what the story was going for, it didn't come off as convincing for me. I felt that the argument between Gadi and Charlie was good, and it showed their passion and how they butted heads over such an incident, but because I never felt romantic chemistry between them, I felt that Gadi and Charlie had grown closer as friends rather than lovers.
Instead of being the tall dark stranger who had a soft spot for Charlie, I felt that Gadi had two modes, which were cold and unfeeling, and in love with Charlie, and these two modes did not really mesh together well to be one person.
Charmian Ross
I thought that Florence Pugh was great from a technical standpoint. She was doing everything right and I really felt like Charlie was a young, clever-ish delinquent type of character.
I'd heard great things about Florence Pugh's performance and I really wanted to love her in the role, but the first couple of episodes focused so much on Charlie's feelings for Gadi that I found it difficult to determine whether I disliked her performance, or if I just disliked the romance scenes.
I could imagine Charlie as a spy, but I just wasn't feeling it when she was being a seductress, whether it was her connecting with Gadi, or with Khalil.
That being said, I still acknowledge that Florence Pugh was great from a technical standpoint. She was doing everything right. I just couldn't connect with her.
Shimon
Marty said that when God was finished making him, there was some leftover wire that was haphazardly put together which turned into Shimon. I thought this was a cute way of introducing Shimon to the team lol.
Shimon was Marty's right hand man, and tried to take after him in terms of being a calculating manager. Unfortunately, he didn't have the same level of authority as Marty (both in terms of professional rank and from a character standpoint), so he did run into issues when running his own operations, such as when Gadi ignored his orders and followed Charlie after she dropped off the car in Austria.
Ms. Bach
Ms. Bach was a member of Marty's team. She was initially tasked with extracting information from Salim under the guise of being a sort of liaison/good cop. After Salim was killed, she moved to a researcher role within the team.
Schwilli
Schwilli was a forger that worked on Marty's team. He created false photographs and other sorts of forgeries to ensure that "the fiction became reality."
Daniel
Daniel was kind of an enforcer in Marty's team.
Rachel
Rachel was a member of Marty's team who was often responsible for acting. She was the hitchhiker who lured Salim into Marty's trap, and was often sent out into the field to pass on information to Charlie.
Rose
Rose was another member of Marty's team who Charlie had actually met before she had been officially recruited as an actress. Later on, she performed more of an enforcer role.
Dr. Paul Alexis
I wasn't totally sure of Paul's role. He was an officer for some organization that Marty was working with, and would help him out in passing on information or gathering manpower. When working with Paul, Marty used the pseudonym Schumann.
Salim/Michel
Salim was a Palestinian terrorist and the youngest brother of the infamous Khalil. He had a habit of getting into whirlwind romances. Marty took advantage of this reputation and created a lover for Salim.
I did feel that Salim broke a little too easily when Marty showed him the truth of where he really was. But I forgave that because I'm sure that that might happen to many people in the real world.
Anna Witgen
Anna was Salim's accomplice and lover in his terrorist attacks. She was caught after having picked up the red Mercedes with sentax hidden in it. And later, Marty's team killed her and Salim in a faked car crash.
Rossino
Rossino was a reporter who was working on the Palestinian side. He was also responsible for coordinating recruits and attacks in Europe.
Helga Stern
Helga was another of Khalil's accomplices, who coordinated recruits and attacks in Europe. I thought that Helga was pretty annoying, to be honest. She tried so hard to be a hard bitch who was actually a fun and caring friend, but she just came off as being someone who was trying too hard in my opinion. She was killed by Marty's team by the end.
Anton Mesterbein
Anton was a Swiss lawyer who often represented radical clients. He was Salim's lawyer, and Salim would regularly send information to Anton in order to coordinate terrorist attacks.
Fatmeh
Fatmeh was Salim and Khalil's sister. After Charlie passed her training under Captain Tayeh, she was sent to live with Fatmeh and other friends. Fatmeh helped Charlie to feel like a part of the family, as she was technically Salim's widow in their eyes.
Khalil
Khalil was the mastermind of many of the Palestinian terrorist attacks. Charlie was sent to meet Khalil when she returned from Lebanon, probably because she was ok'ed by Fatmeh. Khalil built a bomb for Charlie, who would then drop it off at Dr. Minkel's talk.
In her brief interaction with Marty and Gadi, she mentioned that she believed Khalil was falling in love with her, probably through their conversations and what he thought was their shared ideologies. Marty wanted to take advantage of that, to get Charlie in to the innermost circle in order to get as many names as possible. However, through this method, we would definitely see more bombings before Khalil and his associates were eventually caught.
Anyway, Marty's plan was never to kill Khalil as he wanted those contacts. However, Khalil became aware that Charlie might've been a spy and took out the batteries in the radio, which then prompted Gati to go in and kill Khalil, as he probably believed that Khalil would hurt Charlie.
In his last moments, I think that Khalil truly did feel betrayed. He was so shocked that Charlie's ideologies might not have been true at all.
Arthur A. Halloran
He was the recruit in Lebanon who was not making progress at all. First, he tried to get Charlie to inform the US embassy of his whereabouts so that he could at least go home. Later on, he saw Charlie spying and took advantage of that to try to get ahead. However, Charlie was able to turn the crowd against him.
Chief Inspector Picton
He was an English inspector that Marty was working with to control the explosion that Khalil would build to be sent to Dr. Minkel's talk. The plan wasn't to stop the bomb entirely, as it would rouse suspicion on Khalil's side. Instead, Picton would have the bomb placed in a safer location so that as few people as possible would be hurt.
Though Picton only showed up for a handful of episodes, I thought he was a pretty interesting character, and a charming asshole.
Dr. Minkel
Dr. Minkel was an Israeli academic who advocated for peace. Khalil wanted to kill as many of these peace advocates as possible and that is why he targeted her talks. She died in the explosion.
Themes
Fiction and reality
The biggest theme throughout the series was turning fiction into reality. Marty believed that the predator could only be caught if the prey was as realistic as possible. As such, his team was responsible for creating a show as realistic as possible, which was why they needed an amazing actress such as Charlie.
A few times, it was mentioned that fiction was safer than reality. This was relevant to the idea that Charlie would have been safer as the former girlfriend of Salim, than as a spy.
I'll talk about this below too, but Charlie did seem to come to care for Salim as she got more familiar with her role as Salim's widow, despite never having met him. In this case, fiction was becoming reality.
Theatre
Gadi recited Salim's monologues to understand him. One of the lines was that "terror is theatre." This is true as terrorism is often meant to invoke terror, to draw attention to certain things.
In the case of Marty's team, theatre was being used to prevent terror. They were putting on a stage production for Khalil's team, and they even hired a theatre actress to play an integral part.
Near the end of the series, when Charlie had returned to England and was planning the attack at Dr. Minkel's attack, she had delivered a few extremely fake lines. First, Rossino insisted that she pretended she recognized Dr. Minkel from afar. Then, when Charlie delivered the bomb to Dr. Minkel, Marty instructed her to play out the rest of the scene. I think this was a more literal showing of how theatre was used in both committing and preventing terrorism.
Identity
Charlie said that she acted her characters by becoming them. She used the same approach when becoming a spy for Marty's team. She had to believe that she was in love with Salim, and she did sympathize with him in the end, though maybe more for the fact that she felt that Marty was treating him inhumanely.
When Charlie was preparing for her role, Gadi was often the stand in for Salim. As such, Gadi had to understand and become Salim in order for Charlie to get into her role. This seemed to be successful since, as mentioned, Charlie really did seem to at least care for Salim a little.
In one of the fake love letters between Charlie and Salim, Salim mentioned that their bodies and bloods were becoming mixed. There was also a scene in which Salim was fading out and Charlie was fading in. I saw this as a symbol of Charlie becoming more in tune with Salim's ideologies, which helped her settle in her role.
There was a brief moment when Gadi had thought that maybe Charlie had become a true Palestinian sympathizer. This did not bother Marty. He said that Charlie's alignment did not matter as long as they could use her. So whether Charlie was still acting as Salim's lover or whether she truly became a Palestinian sympathizer, she was still going through the motions that made her useful to Marty's team.
Perspective
Marty said that a night without rest was a day without perspective. While perspective was prominent as a visual theme throughout the show, I think it still made sense from a storytelling standpoint.
Before Charlie had even met Marty, she had attended a talk hosted by Michel/Salim, and possibly became a sympathizer at that time. Being a sympathizer requires seeing things from another perspective. And in her job as an actress, Charlie said that she could only perform if she lived her characters, thus seeing things through their perspective.
Overall
I think that the story telling and cinematography of this show was solid. The costumes and architecture were also great.
My problem with this show mainly arose from the acting and casting. I went through the Tumblr tags and saw that some people really liked the acting though, so I think it's just a matter of taste.