a risk-free walk to dreamland

NETFLIX – ON DEMAND – SERIES

Between 1989 and 1996, the publication of the booklets of The Sandman, published by DC (cradle of Superman and Batman) has powerfully contributed to the passage of comics to adulthood. Author Neil Gaiman and successive artists over the years have turned their backs on the rules of the genre to venture into other territories: poetry, metaphysics, philosophy. By inventing a new species of supernatural beings, personifying the essential elements of the human condition, from desire to death, Gaiman has organized a shimmering and elegant mythology. Cinema has been dreaming of taking it on for decades, hampered both by the difficulty of embodying such immaterial themes and by the demands of the original screenwriter.

We are in the XXI^e century, feature films are no longer the alpha and omega of fiction. The Sandman finally takes flesh in the space of a series, which received the imprimatur of Neil Gaiman. Comic book readers and devotees will note that some characters have changed genders, that the timeline has been amended to reflect the present day.

There remains a part of the essential: the discovery of the world of dreams in the footsteps of the Sandman (known in French under the name of ” Sand seller “), also says Morpheus, eternal being, to whom fell the supervision of the domain of dreams, and especially of the border which separates them from reality. Lack – and this is a shame for a story made of this stuff – the strangeness and the anxiety that immediately distinguished The Sandman everything from comics.

Tremendous means

We can always be satisfied with the discovery of a story of tremendous inventiveness, embodied by a deliciously heterogeneous cast that brings together British veterans (Stephen Fry, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis) and newcomers who are entrusted with essential roles (Vivienne Acheampong as a librarian and historian of the land of dreams, Vanesu Samunyai as a mortal who has unwittingly become the rival of Morpheus). By this yardstick, Sandman remains a pleasant show that puts the formidable means that Netflix (here broadcaster) and Warner (the parent company of DC, which produced the series) have offered it at the disposal of the narration, without sacrificing the one-upmanship.

Neil Gaiman is no newcomer to playoff country. He was held responsible for the debacle that concluded the adaptation of his novel American Gods – he would have obtained the eviction of the showrunners who he felt were deviating too much from the original plot. Conversely, he found in David Tennant and Michael Sheen the ideal interpreters to embody the demon and the angel of Good Omens, picaresque version of the Apocalypse that can be seen on Prime Video.

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