This is nowhere near a “Life Is Beautiful” situation, but there’s an undeniable incongruity — while the agony of the Franks and their friends the Van Pelses and Fritz Pfeffer receives ample and serious treatment, it alternates beats in the narrative with scenes like Miep and Jan meeting cute at a jazz club or reuniting in a Technicolor tulip field. (That rural reunion, in a field that was earlier seen being fertilized, is a good indicator of the series’s audience-pleasing instincts: It’s both an on-the-nose metaphor for renewal and part of an ongoing gag about manure.)
Another way of looking at the show’s texture is that a serious attempt is being made at a complicated mix of tones, the kind of thing an accomplished director working in a shorter time frame would be more likely to pull off; here, executed by committee, it’s done proficiently but without the kind of subtlety or imagination that would do full justice to the story.
But there are moments in “A Small Light,” particularly in the first two episodes and again at the end, when it fulfills its promise, and can move you to sudden, unexpected tears. They are provided by Liev Schreiber, who gives an utterly believable, exquisitely modulated performance as Otto Frank. From his first moment, quizzically interviewing the unlikely secretarial candidate Miep, everything Schreiber wants us to know about Frank is apparent: the stiff reserve, the shrewd pragmatism, the quiet nobility, the sneaky sense of humor.
Much of “A Small Light” is devoted to the relationship between Miep and Jan, but its most potent emotional arc is the growing friendship and trust between her and Otto. And while the balance of the series is dominated by familiar (though well staged) scenes of derring-do and tragedy, its best moments by far are quiet conversations in which Schreiber and Powley supply the emotional shadings and complexities of real drama. (Powley’s performance goes to a higher level whenever she’s alone with Schreiber.)
Otto’s place in the story recedes during the middle of the series, after the Franks have gone into hiding. But as history would have it, he re-emerges, and Schreiber, with graceful understatement, uses his body and expression to convey the ravages of the camps. With what might seem like a minimum of effort, given the containment of his performance, Schreiber succeeds in making us see Otto as both a mensch and a man.
Mike Hale
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