The Serpent
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Jenna Coleman, Billy Howle
Director: Tom Shakland, Hans Herbots
Throughout the 1970s, Charles Sobhraj, a con-man, thief and a serial killer was at work targeting innocent tourists on their trips to South Asia. Charles, who went by many aliases, but most commonly Alain Gautier, would drug these tourists and in the pretense of taking care of them, would rob them of their money and legal documents. While he entrapped a few, he soon escalated his crimes to murder, getting rid of any witnesses who could turn him in to the police. He was suspected of killing at least 12 people, but authorities suspect him of killing many more.
In the new Netflix series The Serpent, we see Charles (Tahar Rahim) at the peak of his criminal activity. When we start, he has already graduated from a petty thief, a wanted criminal and kidnapper. We see him living his life glamorously in Bangkok, with his ‘wife’ Marie-Andre (Coleman) and a loyal set of particularly curated ‘friends,’ who look the other way when he wants to kill, and sometimes participate in it. Of course, the show doesn’t jump right into it, in fact, in the first couple of episodes, Charles Sobhraj or Alain Gautier looks quite passive, only giving instructions and letting his minions do his dirty work. However, as the show progresses, the events turn more sinister, and Charles’ passive face quickly turns icy.
The Serpent, which was also a name given to Charles, because he could slither out of sticky situations by manipulating people around him, is exactly about that. It’s not the story of the grizzly murders, it is about the grooming and manipulation that happened before them. It is also about how Charles got away with it, by manipulating people’s biases against the tourists or ‘hippies’ and ‘longhairs’ who the police thought of as drug-addicts and runaways. No one cared when these people went missing, and that was exactly how Charles was enabled to carry out his work.
The show also takes place through the point-of-view of different protagonists. One of the major characters in the show is Herman Knippenberg (Howle), a member of the Dutch Embassy in Thailand, who tries to find a missing couple from his country. Nobody, from the police to his own boss, cares about the two people, and Knippenberg is told time and again to ‘drop’ the case because it is not his work. But in the quest of his ‘two Dutch’ (as he says in broken English) he uncovers the more sinister web of Alan Gautier’s lies. In a way, by making his timeline as important and as interesting as Charles’, the show takes the agency away from the murderer and gives it to other people involved, the ones who were affected or the ones who got him to face the consequences of his actions.
The show, in itself, is extremely binge-able. The 70s aesthetic is on point. Charles and Marie Andre look stunning throughout the show. This is done purposefully, as the couple attracted their victims through their show of glamour, wealth and status. The two looked and acted extremely sophisticated, which was why many put their guard down. Even though the real story of Sobhraj is so much stranger, The Serpent gets the essence right to quite an extent.
Tahar Rahim, who is currently an award season favourite for his role in The Mauritian, has been able to embody the different layers of Charles Sobhraj. He goes from passive to enigmatic to sinister with ease. Jenna Coleman brings a necessary depth to the film. She is a great choice as Marie-Andre or Monique, a woman who is so lonely that she agrees to help the man she loves, kill. However, she quickly turns into an abused and scared woman, who has been sucked in and entrapped into this mess. Billy Howel is also quite promising as a frantic young man who has come across a dangerous situation, way above his pay-grade but keeps doing what he thinks is right anyway.
The Serpent is the story of a serial killer, who also was an intelligent man. However, unlike the many cinematic adaptations of Charles Sobhraj’s life, it does not celebrate him. People are complicated, sure, but the line between showing the greys and glorifying your protagonist is thin. The Serpent knows that.
Rating: 3.5/5
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