Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman was launched in 1989. This extremely popular series was bound into ten collections. Following Dream of the Endless, also known as Morpheus, Onieros and many other names, we explore a magical world filled with stories both horrific and beautiful.
Layered with themes of adultery, rape, abuse and addiction, The Sandman is graphic, alright. But its world is so fantastical and seemingly out of reach that it seems impossible to translate those pages to any format of film.
The Sandman took over 30 years to come to life. Those of us, who have already been through Gaiman’s piece of singular brilliance in audio or book form, had only “dreamed”about this day, the readers might get the reference.But thank heavens, Netflix took charge so that we today can see the beauty of Gaiman’s words in live-action. For the newbies, all you need to know is that this is a fantastical realm created by an author loved across all ages globally. The story is about the King of Dreams, Lord Morpheus, aka The Sandman, who is on a quest of some sort after escaping his captors in the waking world post a century.
The makers have made sure that even those unfamiliar with the works of Gaiman at large, will be forced to sit up and take notice of what is unravelling before them. The magnetic combination of a strong narrative, talented actors, some great visual effects and production design takes care of that wonderfully.
The attention to the detail, right from the costumes to the fashion in which the worlds of dream and hell are birthed is spellbinding. The lord of hell, Lucifer Morningstar, is played by Game of Thrones actor Gwendolen Christie. You fear her even when she smiles. Then there is Patton Oswalt playing the raven Matthew, Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine, Stephen Fry as a dream form called Gilbert, the superb David Thewlis as the unhinged John Dee, Sanjeev Bhaskar as Cain and Asim Chaudhary as Abel to name a few. But the two stars who steal the limelight in this pilot season are Boyd Holbrook, who plays the diabolical Corinthian also to put simply the evil nightmare who has a set of teeth for eyes, and they did justice to the role with casting the main lead. Because British actor Tom Sturridge, not very well known outside the UK, is magnificent as The Sandman.
