1864 - Amour et Trahisons en Temps de Guerre

Let me start off by saying that I think 1864 is a beautifully filmed series with several solid performances and a lot of work put into creating the scenery, props and costuming. That being said, it's saddled with a pretty lukewarm script. There were lots of places Bornedal could have gone with this piece of history, and at times one is confused as to why he made some of the choices he did. One of the most common complaints is the present-day connection, which does feel unnecessary at times, but what's far worse are the absolutely out-of-the-blue supernatural elements which pop up toward the middle of the series and add nothing to the story but a thoroughly shattered suspense of disbelief. Beyond that bit, I found the series to be reasonably historical. Not a documentary, mind you, but as faithful as could be reasonably expected. The other problem with the series is that it occasionally lays on the melodrama too thick, sometimes almost comically so.

TL;DR- Despite the the writing problems, I found myself captivated by this shiny, sometimes stupid period drama. (also, ep. 7 contains one of the most epic battle sequences I've seen in a long time, so there's that.)

**If you're reading this in another country, you ought to know that many ratings and reviews of this series are highly politically charged. Some liberals hate it outright because it received so much public funding, and the Danish Peoples Party hates it for its (justifiably) negative depiction of extreme nationalism and its consequences.

In 1864, Denmark launched what seems in retrospect an inexplicable war of national expansion. It ended in ignominious defeat at the hands of Bismark's Prussian army. '1864' attempts to tell the story of this war, and is both a personal tale centred on a number of its protagonists, and perhaps also, a story of the eventual birth of the Denmark we know today, the peaceful modern social democracy that eventually superseded the nationalist pretensions of the 19th century. There's been a lot of Danish drama released internationally in recent years, but it's a small country, and fans of other Danish series will recognise a huge proportion of the cast in this one. But sadly, '1864' does not live up to the standards of 'The Killing' or 'Borgen'. It's slow, ponderous, repetitive, obvious and the attempt to wrap up the 19th century story in a contemporary wrapping further reduces the immediacy of the drama. The budget for battle scenes, meanwhile, seems to have been spent entirely in episode 7, which is impressive in itself, but the rest of the episodes speak of war without actually showing it very much. And we never really understand just how the Danish politicians thought that the war could actually be won. Outside of Denmark, the war of 1864 is a little known quirk of European history; I'd be interested to know more, but in spite of its 8 hour duration, I finished this drama still frustratingly uninformed.

If you have a flair for European historical stuff, you should like this series. Background is the conflict between the then German Confederation/ Prussia and Denmark around 1860, that eventually led to a war where the already small Denmark lost a good portion of its territory. A part of which however was restituted after WW1 & Versailles after a plebiscite.

An impressive series. Well shot, with excellent representation of costumes and uniforms and the gear of these times. With a lot of themes built in, national pride, political (misled) ambitions, overestimation of the own capabilities, some love, a portrait of the political, aristocrats and peasantry classes, even some supernatural parts. I have seen only few of the actors playing in the series before, in general they deliver a decent acting, not much to criticize IMO. The actor delivering the remarkable character of Monrad is to point out for his impressive performance.

The series was ordered by the danish state I think in occasion of the 150 years anniversary of the events and delivers a fair view of the events. No glorifying nationalistic BS, but a sensible portrait of the era. You might want to read the article about the conflict in wiki first however, to get the hole background of that part of the history.

A solid production, history aficionados won't be disappointed. There has been been the usual criticism about the historical accuracy, but I wouldn't mind. There was portrayed nothing wrong in the wider scheme of the history. It seems that for this kind of "historical" series there are always accuracy pedants jumping out, while they still don't get that it is just a TV-show with aspiration to entertain, where some artistic freedom must be given, and not a documentary.

Series shows very well how some agitators can create too much national feeling and guide people to think "we deserve what others have". Some things reminded me much of 3rd Reich too which happened laters in Germany and what is also sadly happening in Russia today.

Pictures greatly how common people pay the highest price when things escalate to madness like war. Its common today and mostly by US made films to raise war to something "heroic" and "glorious" where individuals just keep going and going like nothing touches them really. which is total bullshit.

There is ongoing try to wipe the past we people have had with wars in this world.

And when reading others comments people are too used to see those war glorifying movies which is supported at least US war industries and government. Guess you need some life experience to see thru all current "propaganda" that is happening.

Overall, nice acting and feeling in movie which you see rarely today unfortunately.

Hope Danes make more series like this. :)

An epic drama about one of the most crucial events shaping modern Denmark (or rather cutting away 1/3 of the nation, Schleswig-Holstein, mainly German speaking). Fantastic sound, picture (remarkable use of different weather conditions) and epic, "beautyfull" (hmmm....can one say that?) very realistic battle scenes, some of the best made in European movies for a long time i believe. Thats the 5 of the 6 stars. Storyline and acting is confusing though. The overplay and "over"-telling the message "war is bad, all generals and politicians are nationalists / more or less cold at heart or even bordering to crazy, and all the soldiers are victims"..... This simply ruins the series. Nationalism and war is much more complex than that and Bornedal fails to tell this story....even though he had a whole candy box of opportunities. He could have chosen a Danish minority family in German Holstein or a German minority family in Danish majority area Schleswig. Or why not the Swedish connection (the "nationalist awakening" of being Scandinavian brothers happened in this century after Sweden, Norway and Denmark had fought each other for over 1000 years), so this brotherhood that now stands for the Scandinavian soul today almost made the Swedish king deploy 15000 troops to Denmark to fight Prussia in this war. Or why not a Polish family living in exile in Denmark. Poland (a Danish Neighbor)disappeared from the map (about 120 years) in 1795 after roughly 1000 years of existence, divided by the big powers of Europe. Denmark was also afraid of simply to disappear, one reason for this war in 1864. These stories could very well describe the complexity of nationalism: identity, fear, hope, pride, community, cultural tradition and identity, language etc. Nationalism is not only Adolf H. and other idiots. Bornedal choice as side stories then: A Roma (Gypsy) family (????) and a healing Harry Potter that can do Hypnosis and see into the future.....WHAT THE F....happened.....Some errors in the historical facts is OK (Colonel Max Müller was not at all at Dybbøl and so on)...and the main characters are fine.....but failing to grab some of the most obvious good side stories and replace them with irrelevant and clairvoyant crap is nothing more but a big time failure from Bornedal....sadly....loosing the obvious opportunity to depict the complexity and horror of war and national identity, instead making it halfway a 70-hippie "all politicians are bad" story. This is a big big shame..... therefore only max. 6 stars (could have been 10 with that fantastic and historically spot-on scenery). We lost the war and now also the series about it.....Lets hope the movie version will cut out the "noice" of this series.......and bring the epic beautiful drama it could be.....