THE SERPENT | WE’VE BEEN WATCHING
This stylish dramatisation tells the twisted tale of Charles Sobhraj, at one time Interpol’s most wanted man but now a septuagenarian living out his last days in a Nepalese prison. Being the subject of an eight-part BBC series might flatter Sobhraj’s ego, but The Serpent is no crass glorification of the notorious serial killer, who preyed on young tourists in South East Asia in the 1970s.
For a start, there is no sympathy for the devil, beyond acknowledging his bitterness at the racism he experienced growing up as a mixed-race French-Vietnamese child in Paris. That much is unsurprising, given what lead actor Tahar Rahim told the Guardian: “Usually I start building a character from the inside. I try to find bridges psychologically between me and him, but here there was nothing.” Rahim’s Sobhraj is a pitiless, manipulative sadist with a superiority complex, a cold-blooded killer who exudes a psychopathic calm.
Then there is the fact that The Serpent is almost equally the story of Sobhraj’s lover Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman), a study in self-deceit and hypnotised complicity, and Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (Billy Howle), a principled but naïve idealist whose dogged determination to bring fellow Bangkok resident Sobhraj to justice risks his career and wrecks his marriage.
Sobhraj makes victims of everyone he encounters, bringing only darkness to those searching for enlightenment on the hippy trail. Backpackers – mere kids, with anxious families back at home and whole futures ahead of them – are routinely drugged, robbed and murdered, Sobhraj enriching himself under the pretence that he is righteously punishing privileged Westerners for the crime of cultural colonialism. In truth, Sobhraj is in many ways no different from those he targets – he too is seeking to flee his past in pursuit of freedom and the thrill of international travel, but does so by stealing the passports, freedom and lives of others, and winds up confined to a cell.
A complex exploration of weighty themes (identity, power, compulsion, trust, racial politics), The Serpent also triumphs as a classic cat-and-mouse thriller. Each time the net tightens, the slippery Sobhraj proves to be adept at evading capture. It’s a reminder of a pre-internet age when the world wasn’t so interconnected and you could simply disappear – or be disappeared.
The narrative skips backwards and forwards in time are initially dizzying, but with hindsight you realise this tells the convoluted story comprehensibly, while building dramatic tension. Brilliantly acted, beautifully shot and blessed with a perfect soundtrack, The Serpent is intoxicating viewing and certainly worth the investment of your time.
Available on BBC iPlayer now. Info: here
words BEN WOOLHEAD
