The long-anticipated adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s bestselling and Pulitzer prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See is finally here. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely not.
There is money behind it, it’s beautifully lit, lovingly shot – it looks gorgeous. But here’s the thing. When you are adapting a book about a blind French girl making illicit radio broadcasts in the occupied French coastal town of Saint-Malo and a reluctant German orphan snapped up by the Third Reich for his magical radio skills secretly listening every night and finding a vestige of hope therein, while dealing with questions about the value of art and life, the encroachment of evil and the possibility of redemption, you had better be pretty hot on the latter stuff or you are going to be punting down the River Twee into Triteland very quickly indeed.
