Imagine a winter alpine panorama. Mountains. Snow. Conifers. Powerful and full of the canvas. Nothing but nature.
And now imagine an incredibly deep roar that interrupts the silence that prevails in front of it. Not one horn, but many horns, all of which play the lowest note you can imagine – and then this note an octave lower. After about three seconds, the noise fades away. There is silence again. And then it sounds again, this very darkest possible roar in front of this winter landscape, in which one suddenly no longer sees beauty, but only the danger that lies beneath, because evil slumbers in this tone and it has just moved.
Conditioned for gloomy premonitions
That’s the mood in the series “The Pass” (2019), which shows in eight grandiose episodes that the idyllic landscape of the Bavarian-Austrian border area is terrifyingly suitable as a scene of the most gruesome crimes.
She has received so many awards that it seems pointless to praise her again here, especially since you don’t even know where to start. With the psychologically fine staging by the directors Philipp Stennert and Cyrill Boss, who also wrote the scripts? With the actors, above all Julia Jentsch and Nicholas Ofczarek as investigators, whose acting you can’t get enough of? With the pictures of the cameraman Philip Peschlow – gloomy tableaus, whose perfect aesthetics are never in the foreground. Or the music, on which the film composer Hans Zimmer contributed, among others. He is considered to be primarily responsible for the ominous roar described at the beginning, which is officially onomatopoeic called “BRAAAM”, punching through the score of almost every thriller. Zimmer first used it in “Inception” (2010) – in the meantime one is so conditioned to the sound of a gloomy premonition that even if one were only shown funny cat videos, one would be put on the highest alert. The second season of “Der Pass” is coming in a few weeks. Fear. Anticipation.
You can find more episodes of the “Nothing new” column here.