Le jeune Karl Marx

Given my interests, it would be very difficult for me not to have enjoyed this film, so I may not be the most neutral judge of its merit. I would say that this is a good biopic, though also the least interesting film I've seen by director Raul Peck. If Hollywood were to make a biopic of Marx and Engels, which it would never do, it would probably look a bit like this: good set-pieces, solid acting. There's a bit too much focus on the two men's love lives. (We need out watershed thinkers to be sexy!) As in almost any biopic of a creative person, there are some ham-fisted moments that attempt to depict major moments in the subject's creative development, including a rather laugh inducing one concerning the most famous quote from the Thesis on Feuerbach. On that note, the way in which it seems to me that this does stray from a Hollywood treatment is its attempt to, superficially at least, explicate some of Marx's early philosophy.

Greetings again from the darkness. When the name Karl Marx comes up, most of us recall that iconic photo of the older gentleman with the large grey beard. As with all older gents, they were once young men, and that's the focus of this film from writer/director Raoul Peck and co-writer Pascal Bonitzer.

The story kicks off in 1843 when young Marx was the editor of "Rheinische Zeitung" and carries us through the 1848 publication of "The Communist Manifesto". We progress chronologically through Paris, Brussels and London and witness how Marx's personal life and ideological mission intertwined, leading ultimately to the birth of Communism.

August Diehl (INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) plays Karl Marx and Stefan Konarske plays Friedrich Engels. Their mutual admiration brought them together and their commitment, along with the support of their wives Jenny Marx (Vicky Krieps, PHANTOM THREAD) and Mary Burns (Hannah Steele), carried them through and cemented their legacies.

With the endless string of debates and discussion, and the constant struggle with poverty for Marx and his family, the film at times seems repetitive and tedious. It does, however, succeed in making comprehensible the timeline and constant struggle to continue the fight. The process of societal-changing writing is not simple, and we see the different approaches taken by Marx and the upper-crust rebel Engels. The obvious battle between Bourgeoisie and Proletariat remains at the forefront, but we also witness the painstaking networking and research that goes into the work. The two gentlemen share a drink over this toast: "to minds that truly think".

Today, many in their 20's, are focused on which direction to swipe, yet at the same age, Marx and Engels were committed to changing the world. The ideals and issues that so dominated their writings (and led to revolution) are every bit as relevant today. We no longer use the terms Bourgeoisie or Proletariat, but class distinction continues to be debated as a source of many global issues - both social and economic. Director Peck (Oscar nominated for last year's I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO) uses Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" over the closing credits montage of revolutions and historic turning points to ensure we understand that rebellions and convictions do still exist.

Peck's film follows appealingly prickly young Marx and Engels from their early insistence on the hard truths of class-conflict against the utopian socialists of their day, to the founding of the first workers' international with a program of anti-capitalist struggle, the Communist Manifesto. Only a profit-system triumphalist would resist cheering them on along with the galvanized, wretched workers of 1848. The contrasting constraints on their activist mates, the high-born Jenny Marx and worker Mary Burns, raise still-pressing issues, and the situation of Engels, the revolutionary intellectual who must finance the cause by working for the enemy, may resonate with professionals today.

But the movie, concluding with a montage of wars and protests churned up by the profit system in the present, feels frustrating and incomplete - inevitably so. It doesn't show the collective hero of Marx and Engels' vision, the world working class. This class, that produces all, is now ever more interlinked and technically advanced. But its political development hasn't caught up with material conditions that never existed in previous challenges to capitalism. The decisive fight against the old system for humanity's future has yet to be waged, its film still to be made. R. Freed

When an honest film like this gets 6.5 stars on IMDB and The Avengers: Infinity Wars get 9.1, it shows that there is something terribly wrong with the ranking system on this site. A thinking film that captures the emotional, social and political complexity of mid-nineteenth industrial European radicalism is something to be truly cherished in this age of the vomit and mind numbing putridity coming from the nightmare factory of popular culture. That's all I need to say. Just watch this film.

It was wonderful to see Karl Marx and Engels in front of a big screen and to see them as real human beings who eat, drink, converse, and love. The film features a stellar cast with superb acting. However it's utterly lacking in vision, imagination, and depth.

The film takes place in Prussia in 1843 when in Marx's was in his mid-20s, it ends five years later with the publication of the "Manifesto" ; a collaboration with his friend Engels in France just before the major 1848 revolutions sweeping Europe

Instead of a stirring, sweeping, though-provoking historical film biography set in revolutionary times like the Lion of the Desert, it seemed like a barely memorable, emotionally uncompelling and intellectually unstimulating soap opera that could have been shown on PBS's Masterpiece Theater funded by the Ford Foundation. In other words, a film so absolutely sanitized, it's provokes little controversy, political or otherwise. Anyone really looking to understand the time period or know more about Marx and Engels will be sorely disappointing.

The film begins with great promise showing peasants being hunted and killed by armed police on horseback for gathering fallen branches in the woods; an act of theft according to the elite; then cuts to Marx and his colleagues having their publishing headquarters raided, destroyed, and being arrested by Prussian police for writing critical articles in the progressive newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung. Then the film turns into a bad B rated male bonding film. At first each is wary of each other as they meet in the parlor of the publisher Arnold Ruge. Within minutes of meeting, Engels tell Marx out of nowhere, You're the greatest materialist thinker of our time; A genius." (although we in the audience are stumped to know why) and from this moment on they become best buddies; acting like "hip", well-dressed, immature teenage schoolboys: drinking, smoking , running from cops, and country hopping reminiscent of the silent slapstick keystone comedy.

The Young Karl Marx could have been a deeply, moving, intellectually profound, and politically astute film like Midnight Cowboy, Cinderella Liberty or countless other films from the 70's; where deep friendship and love is set among the realistic grinding poverty, desperation, and bleakness of a major city; but it is not. According to the director he wanted modern audiences to relate to the film. So the Europe of the 1840's is transformed into resembling the superficiality and shallowness of the 21st century. Never do we seem to feel the overwhelming suffering and anguish of the workers. If the director had never experienced or eye-witnessed hunger, deprivation, seen a slum or inside of a factory at the very he could have done some research.

Marx' family is poor, but the only deprivation visually depicted is Marx buying cheap cigars; hardly deprivation unless one is smoking to quell hunger pains. Never do we see real images of poverty: People freezing without coats, wearing rags, or sick and coughing from malnutrition. Never do we see scenes such as: Marx or his wife complain about eating small scraps of just plain, stale bread 2 weeks in a row, or even a scene where Marx is seen giving his share of a tiny piece of bread to his wife or child with the look of hunger in his eyes. Scenes even true in the US today. Rather everything is purposely sanitized from the lack of horse crap and human crap on the city streets to the bums and ragged, homeless children on the streets to the regimented textile mills utterly devoid of any coughing or appearance of exhaustion among the female workers. Even the drab gray clothing and washed-out color effects dampen our ability to connect to the workers, because they make the film looks so unrealistic.

I remember the first time I entered in a textile factory as a child in NYC. I will never forget the chaotic movement and especially the "fiber" dust. It was so thick; it burned my eyes and nose and blinded me as if I were in a sand storm. I will also clearly remember hearing the sounds of coughing and sneezing between the noise of the sewing machines operating; and the look of sheer exhaustion that every bone in the women's bodies cried out; including those who sat for 8 hour. Let me not also forget having to step over, with the help of my mother, over drunken bodies, because the bar was only two doors down. This was not grinding poverty, but much closer to anything shown in the Young Marx.

The closest we get to working people suffering is in a fictionalized scene where Mary Burns describing how she knew someone who lost some fingers in an accident. One has to ask why did the director need to create this utterly unrealistic fictitious scene? Even today a working woman in the US would think twice before raising her voice and being fired; but Mary Burns not only raises her voice, but walks out of the factory Engel's father owns without even a second thought; especially considering her family could starve to death and she may blacklisted from ever working again. The scene seems to have been invented so Engels could later childishly get back at his father for firing her; as if doing a one upmanship: "In your face, dad!

Marx spent thousands of hours in libraries doing research, taking meticulous notes, and writing and rewriting his works; a large portion of his life, but this is totally missing in the film. It's just not "hip" in today's society to show someone studying, reading lines of poetry, or listening to a beggar singing a classical aria on the street; all things that were part of life in the 1840's; even among factory workers. I rather doubt Marx composed his Labor Value of Theory between bouts of drunkenness or that Engels' major research for his History of the English Working Class came from romancing the young Mary Burns. With so much emphasis on drinking and smoking, I began to wonder ½ through the film how much funding the cigarette and alcohol companies provided.

Except for this one scene, women seem to be sprinkled into the film so it won't be an all-male cast. Their major role, following sexual stereotyping, is supporting their men; as if the time period lacked any revolutionary women. Even the relationship between the main characters and their significant others appear shallow. Both appear more passionate about ideas then their spouses. We never learn why or how Marx and his wife met or married; only that she was an aristocrat, The only passion shown between them is a gratuitous, unromantic, unsensual, and visually distasteful sex scene, which prevents parents from bringing children to see the film. Unless this was the goal, why was it included?

Just like the 2 women are sprinkled into the film, so are two of the biggest social critics of the time the influential social reformist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. We learn little about Proudhon's views and nothing about Bakunin at all.

Though the film ends at the cusp of the failed 1848 revolutions sweeping Europe, no where do we see or hear the sounds of chains rattling; attempting to break free. In a film made during revolutionary times, where are the workers protesting in mass? The film follows Marx & Engels, but not the workers on the street, which Marx and Engels joined.

Bourgeois cinema spends millions indoctrinates the working class into believing they need to follow a messiah who will rescue them. Marx and Engels were great men, but great men don't create history. MLK for example didn't start the civil right movement. No, Great men only do the steering, because it's the workers who create history. The 1848 revolutions didn't pop-up spontaneously among individuals, but through years of organizing among the masses. However, would we really expect anything different? Do we really expect our masters to teach us our history? To give us the theories and to show us how revolutions take place and that they are indeed possible?

The film ends with Marx and Engels writing "The Communist Manifesto," and reading the stirring first line: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism..." when it cuts to music and juxtaposed pictures. Instead of hearing the International and aspiring images of the Paris Commune and Russian Revolution, we hear the apolitical Bob Dylan song "Like a Rolling Stone" juxtaposed with photos from Che Guevara and Castro to Reagan and Thatcher. Ironically or perhaps expected Lenin and Stalin are not included; so as to not offend the financial backers or give the workers ideas.