TELEVISION: A Small Light - episode 7
Oct. 31st, 2024 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA Small Light - 1.7 What Can Be Saved
The events of this episode almost came sooner than I expected, although it makes sense, given how tense everything was by the end of the last episode. Also, I believe it’s the penultimate episode. I wasn’t really concentrating on the date that flashed up, or rather didn’t remember its likely significance.
The barrel of the gun pointed at Miep was held by a Nazi, a party of them had come to the office, someone having reported that it was hiding Jews. The focus was on the four office workers, although the show has mainly been about Miep’s relationship with the hidden eight. As a lead-in to what we’d already seen from Meip’s POV, we followed the other three coming in to work, getting glimpses of their home lives. The oldest man got the blonde girl out, as she was clearly not holding things together. He tried to get Miep to go too, but beyond handing on some damning ration books and telling Jan the Gestapo were there, she wouldn’t.
Jan ran to his boss, but was told it was too late (though his boss was impressed they’d hidden eight people for two years), and ran to one of Miep’s colleagues’ brother, who also said there was little they could do now. Joe Cole looked almost boyish in Jan’s grief and fear.
It was the traces of the secret door on the floor that gave it away to the most astute officer, and one of them had to whistle for the hiders to open it (or get shot). We didn’t directly see anything – heard it from Miep’s perspective, and saw them being led out in silhouette through the window of a door.
Miep was ordered to save what she could by the office manager, and tried to scrabble for leverage. She recognised the astute Nazi was from Vienna too, which worked only insofar as that she wasn’t rounded up like the eight hiders and the two men. Jan and his companion watched from the other side of the canal, as the group were bundled into a van. Peter, Margot and Anne looked very young.
He had to wait until nightfall to go into the office to pick a still, shellshocked Miep up - we’d had shots of the ransacked office, the now empty places that had had life in them earlier in the day.
When she came to, Miep was desperate to act, desperate to feel that she’d done everything she could. And because we know who she is, and this had been her mission for two years, we get it. They came to the idea of bribing the Gestapo officer, and we had a montage (to counter the fact that they’d never know who’d betrayed the secret) of various people, some resistance contacts, one a lady at the market, who offered money for the bribe. Jan tried to utilise the ‘if you love me, you won’t go’ argument on Miep, but she made the excellent point that she was the one who’d had some influence on the Viennese Gestapo officer. The episode ended on her going into the Nazis’ headquarters, nervously carrying a bag full of money, passing all the regalia.
The events of this episode almost came sooner than I expected, although it makes sense, given how tense everything was by the end of the last episode. Also, I believe it’s the penultimate episode. I wasn’t really concentrating on the date that flashed up, or rather didn’t remember its likely significance.
The barrel of the gun pointed at Miep was held by a Nazi, a party of them had come to the office, someone having reported that it was hiding Jews. The focus was on the four office workers, although the show has mainly been about Miep’s relationship with the hidden eight. As a lead-in to what we’d already seen from Meip’s POV, we followed the other three coming in to work, getting glimpses of their home lives. The oldest man got the blonde girl out, as she was clearly not holding things together. He tried to get Miep to go too, but beyond handing on some damning ration books and telling Jan the Gestapo were there, she wouldn’t.
Jan ran to his boss, but was told it was too late (though his boss was impressed they’d hidden eight people for two years), and ran to one of Miep’s colleagues’ brother, who also said there was little they could do now. Joe Cole looked almost boyish in Jan’s grief and fear.
It was the traces of the secret door on the floor that gave it away to the most astute officer, and one of them had to whistle for the hiders to open it (or get shot). We didn’t directly see anything – heard it from Miep’s perspective, and saw them being led out in silhouette through the window of a door.
Miep was ordered to save what she could by the office manager, and tried to scrabble for leverage. She recognised the astute Nazi was from Vienna too, which worked only insofar as that she wasn’t rounded up like the eight hiders and the two men. Jan and his companion watched from the other side of the canal, as the group were bundled into a van. Peter, Margot and Anne looked very young.
He had to wait until nightfall to go into the office to pick a still, shellshocked Miep up - we’d had shots of the ransacked office, the now empty places that had had life in them earlier in the day.
When she came to, Miep was desperate to act, desperate to feel that she’d done everything she could. And because we know who she is, and this had been her mission for two years, we get it. They came to the idea of bribing the Gestapo officer, and we had a montage (to counter the fact that they’d never know who’d betrayed the secret) of various people, some resistance contacts, one a lady at the market, who offered money for the bribe. Jan tried to utilise the ‘if you love me, you won’t go’ argument on Miep, but she made the excellent point that she was the one who’d had some influence on the Viennese Gestapo officer. The episode ended on her going into the Nazis’ headquarters, nervously carrying a bag full of money, passing all the regalia.
