After decades of World War II movies and TV shows, it’s become difficult to find something that you might call truly original. However, The Liberator proves there is still room for a fresh approach to the genre.
Released on Netflix in 2020, the four-part miniseries flew under the radar, despite being based on one of the war’s most remarkable true stories. Among its many qualities, its hybrid animation technique adds a fantastic, almost unique hook, making it feel as much like a graphic novel as a serious drama.
The Liberator tells one of World War II’s greatest sagas
The format of The Liberator will feel familiar. Beginning with the invasion of Italy and ending at the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, the series follows American Army officer Felix Sparks as he and the diverse soldiers of the 157th Infantry Regiment fight for an astonishing 500 days as they battle their way across Europe.
There are parallels with HBO’s excellent Band of Brothers here, with flashbacks to the unit’s early basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, before they are eventually deployed to Sicily in the European theater. Both series are based on real events and carry significant emotional weight. As we accompany these soldiers and learn their personalities and habits throughout some of the war’s most brutal campaigns, their victories feel earned, and the losses linger.
The Liberator skillfully conveys that these are ordinary people dropped into extraordinary circumstances, and doing the best they can under considerable hardships, even through a veneer of animation.
A groundbreaking visual style
The animation is unlike anything else on Netflix
The first time I watched The Liberator, the format caught me off guard. Neither a conventional live-action drama nor a traditional animation, it sits somewhere between the two. The technique it uses is called trioscope, which is a hybrid that combines live-action performances with digitally enhanced, rotoscope-style animation.
The result is reminiscent of Undone, Amazon Prime’s excellent surreal psychological drama that is also a must-see for fans of adult animation. Both series delve deeply into the personal lives of their protagonists, and each uses animation to lend an overarching surreal quality to its surroundings.
In The Liberator, faces retain realistic performances while environments gain a painted, textured quality that makes smoke, mud, and ruined cities feel strangely dreamlike. Far from being a stylistic gimmick, it is a highly effective way to depict the horrors of war without bringing us too close to the action.
A fresh perspective on the war
It gives history’s forgotten soldiers a platform
Like many of the best wartime dramas, the series introduces us to a lively cast of characters from different backgrounds. Sparks’ real-life regiment included Native American, Mexican American, and white soldiers serving side by side at a time when the U.S. military and American society in general remained deeply unequal.
This diversity enabled the series to explore themes of inequality and prejudice within military ranks during WWII while also highlighting the close bonds forged among soldiers in combat. Even Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan don’t delve as deeply into interpersonal relationships and tensions among racially diverse groups as The Liberator does, offering a genuinely fresh perspective that goes beyond familiar battle scenes.
Four episodes with no wasted moments
Tight scripting makes battles and storylines intense and personal
The Liberator stays remarkably focused throughout. Unlike many sprawling war epics that run several storylines concurrently, this series devotes its four episodes almost entirely to a single company of soldiers, allowing us to get to know them better before they are plunged into total mayhem.
This intimacy makes battle scenes all the more effective, as we genuinely fear for the characters’ well-being. Explosions shatter the nerves as friendships are torn apart in the blink of an eye and fleeting moments of hope are obliterated. The exhaustion is palpable, and we sense the soldiers’ endurance and lethargy as the campaign progresses.
The pacing is tight, with each episode focusing on an important part of Sparks’ campaign while steadily building towards its devastating conclusion. There’s no filler at all, which is refreshing to see in a streaming culture that often favors slow-burning multi-episode dramas that span several series.
A hidden Netflix gem worth discovering
As the largest conflict in human history, World War II’s stories should always be retold and remembered in print, film, and television. More recently, however, the subject has become stretched so thin that, in some cases, creators try to mix in absurd love-triangle subplots, as in the disastrous Pearl Harbor, or change history entirely, as in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
The Liberator offers a fresh take on the wartime epic genre and deserves a place among Netflix’s most distinctive originals. Despite being an animated series, and more likely because of it, the series has a unique identity and delivers the emotional depth of the very best war dramas.
I wasn’t even aware of The Liberator when it was first released, overshadowed by bigger productions upon its debut. I now realize that it is an overlooked gem that deserves to be ranked alongside the best wartime dramas currently streaming.
The Liberator
- Release Date
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2020 – 2020-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Grzegorz Jonkajtys
- Writers
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Jeb Stuart
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Finney Cassidy
Sergeant Samuel Coldfoot
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Kiowa Gordon
Corporal Able Gomez