Lazy students of the future will appreciate the new World War II miniseries “All the Light We Cannot See.” It will provide them with a bland Cliffs Notes survey of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2014 novel by Anthony Doerr when their teachers ask them to read it. The miniseries, on Netflix, skims the surface of the story and the characters just enough to get them through a 50-minute class.
The story gives us Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French woman who’s hiding in an attic apartment in the Nazi-controlled French town of Saint-Malo. Late at night, she broadcasts over a shortwave radio, reading excerpts from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” — coded missives to the Allies — and sends messages of hope to her father and uncle, played by Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie, respectively. Meanwhile, a young occupying Nazi, Louis Hofmann’s Werner, listens to her on the air. An orphan…
