AdChoices The Young Karl Marx Film Review The Young Karl Marx Review Following on from the success of I Am Not Your Negro, director Raoul Peck turns his attention to another philosopher from a century earlier who proved to be one of the most influential political theorists of the modern age. Privacy Policy | This film is a careful recreation of the time, place, and thought of one of the most insightful interpreters of the modern era. While ragged peasants are gathering fallen branches from the floor of a forest, they are brutally assaulted by armed horsemen: even picking up dead wood is considered an act of theft. They head to the streets, run from French monarchist police who are busting heads of foreigners and agitators, and get wildly drunk, on both exchanged ideas and spirits. Though embarrassingly poor, he takes the opportunity to move to Paris with his aristocratic wife Jenny von Westphalen (Vicky Krieps) and their infant daughter, then on to Brussels and London. 12:30 PM PST 2/12/2017 The movie does not put ideas at the forefront, but it does present ideas with a solidity that’s admirable. The movie is largely a story of personalities. From its lifelessly anachronistic English dialogue to its Masterpiece Theatre lighting and production design, The Young Karl Marx tries to filter radical thought through the pace and aesthetics of a middlebrow drama. Friedrich is given time to fight with his father and fall in love with the working class Irish firebrand Mary Burns (Hannah Steele). Revolutionary in content, not in execution. Running time: 112 MIN. May 3, 2020May 12, 2020. | California Privacy Rights Though not center stage, Jenny and Mary are significant for adding some women to the revolution, which otherwise seems to be a sea of opinionated men. Their initial meeting, in which Karl gratuitously insults Friedrich, is bristly, but they are united in their thinking about the appalling social conditions and the need to militate beyond vague abstractions about universal brotherhood. “The Young Karl Marx” is a story that should never get old, but here it hardly feels worth telling. French great Olivier Gourmet is droll as Proudhon. Portraying ideas onscreen is always a daunting prospect in a feature film and yet, on this front, The Young Karl Marx stands out as intelligent, stirring, literate and tri-lingual — the characters speak English, French and German fluently. The website's critical consensus reads, " The Young Karl Marx makes a valiant attempt to make the philosophical cinematic, but lacks sufficient depth to tackle its complex themes." Karl is fiery, brilliant, disorganized, passionate. The movie was co-written and directed by Raoul Peck. In the space of a few short votes, Engels and Marx succeed in transforming the utopian socialist/Christian group into the Communist League with the sheer force of their ideas. By Brad Stevens. Screenwriters: Pascal Bonitzer, Raoul Peck I recently watched this film that covers the period when the young Marx became friends with Friedrich Engels, a relationship that lasted a lifetime. Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx. Scenes unfold like a history lesson sans surprises until the end credits, when Bob Dylan’s plaintive voice rises over stunning black-and-white period photos as he sings "Like a Rolling Stone," and one wonders where he was for the previous two hours. A post-diegetic text refers to Marx’s “Kapital,” noting that the work was unfinished, in part because Capital itself is ever evolving. Boring, but with three of four main characters being very sexy. THE YOUNG KARL MARX The Orchard Reviewed by: Harvey Karen Director: Raoul Peck Screenwriter: Pascal Bonitzer, Raoul Peck Cast: August Diehl, Stefan Konarske, Vicky Krieps, Olivier Gourmet, Michael Brander Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/13/18 Opens: February 23, 2018 What four people influenced our present world more than any others? Having just made a stunningly inventive documentary on James Baldwin, the Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro, Peck is a director at the height of his creative powers. | EU Privacy Preferences. All rights reserved. Then it’s The Hungover Karl Marx. In the natural sciences, the names of Galileo, Darwin and Einstein are associated with such revolutions; in the social sciences, it is the names of Marx and Engels. The movie is largely a story of personalities. A straightforward period piece about the life and times of a radical man, Raoul Peck’s “The Young Karl Marx” is well-furnished and fitfully gripping stuff, but it desperately lacks the full-bodied fervor that crackles throughout his Oscar-nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.” The Young Karl Marx is a film of good intentions which stands against those who marginalize independent thinkers rather than consider what they have to say. The action moves to Manchester, England, and a sewing-thread factory owned by Friedrich Engels, Sr. Then, in 1843 German, a Marxist parable, in which poor folk are slaughtered for the crime of collecting deadwood in a forest. Raoul Peck’s Der Junge Karl Marx (The Young Karl Marx) was a surprising film.In one sense, the film is quite mainstream. EMAIL ME. © 2021 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. FACEBOOK August Diehl as Karl Marx in The Young Karl Marx. Jenny is played by Vicky Krieps, of newly minted “Phantom Thread” fame. Reviews of The Young Karl Marx. Read full review An end credits sequence, a montage scored to a well-known '60s rock tune, attempts a precis of the evolution in very short form. 2 minutes 14 seconds Added: Feb 3, 2018 View All Videos (1) The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx) Reviews. Producers: Nicolas Blanc, Remi Grellety, Robert Guediguian, Raoul Peck Engels is, despite his courage and curiosity, a bit more of a wide-eyed innocent and certainly a … THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is a registered trademark of The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. It goes without saying that Karl Marx is among the most important 19th Century political theorists responsible for modern social science. Peck and his co-writer Pascal Bonitzer, who worked with him on Lumumba, are probably wise to opt out of detailing the tragic death of several of Marx’s children and his extramarital affairs. A turning point comes when he makes the acquaintance of a 23-year-old blond dandy named Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske), the son of a factory owner in Manchester. THR Staff Cast: August Diehl, Stefan Konarske, Vicky Krieps, Olivier Gourmet, Michael Brandner, Alexander Scheer, Hannah Steele, Ivan Franek, Niels Bruno Schmidt by Only Darwin, Freud, and Einstein … Sitemap | An intellectually rigorous but stylistically staid peep at the 20-something author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx … The riveting opening scene conveys the extreme poverty of the have-nots and the unbridled arrogance of the haves. She is a very vivid presence from her entrance on—the filmmakers could have cashed in by re-titling the U.S. release “The Hungry Karl Marx.” Marx meets the visiting Engels in Ruge’s drawing room, and after sniffing around each other—Karl instinctively distrusts the born-into-wealth Friedrich—express admiration for each other’s work. | Do Not Sell My Personal Information But here, six years of prep and a legendary subject have led to a surprisingly straight piece of biography shot in a classic style. Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Special gala) By Owen Gleiberman Backstage, as it were, glimpses are afforded into their personal lives. In “The Young Karl Marx,” he gets into friendly debates with Pierre Proudhon (Olivier Gourmet), the firebrand French anarchist who preaches against the world of … Raoul Peck is on a roll. Peck’s co-screenwriters Pascal Bonitzer, a longtime collaborator of the late Jacques Rivette, and the two clearly know their stuff. Their female partners do take secondary roles, but the movie depicts them as committed, innovative, and acute: true fellow travelers and comrades. Film review: The Young Karl Marx (2017) Today marks the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth (1818-1883). Read critic reviews You might also like That is, an account of the title character’s life and thought in the packaging of a conventional and possibly sentimental biopic. the typical American brainwash by the one-star crowd, products of a totalitarian system closed to free thought. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 63 out of 100, based on … Almost entirely dedicated to letting Marx say out loud some of his famous early works as if they were dialogue with important interlocutors, like Proudhon. The movie chronicles their friendship, collaboration, and the tough time they had persuading more idealistic and less proactive workers’ representatives that a coherent doctrine was necessary for any meaningful movement to form and thrive. Berlin Film Review: ‘The Young Karl Marx’ Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival, Feb. 12, 2017. The Young Karl Marx review – intelligent communist bromance Marx and Engels meet cute in this intense, fervent film about the early development of communism from I … Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. In this extraordinary moment, in the midst of pandemic and social isolation, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marxis a powerful and relevant viewing option. In Paris, Marx struggles, unpaid by Ruge, unable to provide for his wife Jenny and their daughter. There are periods when knowledge of nature and society undergoes a quantum leap within a short time. Perhaps biography is not what the current film is driving at (Marx’s co-author, Friedrich Engels, gets almost as much screen time as he does, for starters.) His call to end child labor, wage slavery, inhuman working conditions and abject poverty should strike a resonant chord of agreement in any well-disposed audience. Stefan Pape reviews Raoul Peck's The Young Karl Marx, featuring August Diehl in the eponymous lead role, playing at the Berlinale 2017. Karl is fiery, brilliant, disorganized, passionate. Casting director: Sylvie Brochere Scott McLemee reviews The Young Karl Marx, which, on the eve of 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, contains themes of economic crises and inequalities that remain relevant today. Coming from the director of the unforgettable Lumumba (2000), which chronicled the rise and assassination of the Congo’s democratically elected leader, it’s a bit of a let-down. Sales: Films Distribution. Engaging with director Raoul Peck's handsome, well-acted, sincerely intentioned The Young Karl Marx is, with the benefit of historical hindsight, rather a bittersweet endeavour. Also to be noted, the film is not without its rousing moments, and rings a timely bell in these years of worldwide economic recession, when Marx’s materialist thought is being widely reassessed. The Story of Who We Are: Gregory Nava Helps Celebrate Selena’s 50th Birthday, Thumbnails Special Edition: Gregory Nava's Selena, The Brilliance is in the Details of HBO’s Riveting Mare of Easttown. Le jeune Karl Marx (2017) was shown in the United States with the translated title The Young Karl Marx. The Young Karl Marx: Trailer 1. Peck rightly credits Marx for formulating the ideas that led to the first major working class political party and for his call to end child labor, wage slavery, inhuman working conditions, and abject poverty. A feverish intellectual collaboration begins. Review: A cerebral bromance between the charismatic Marx and the rakish Engels Tara Brady Stefan Konarske as Engels and August Diehl as Marx in 'The Young Karl Marx' The movie begins with a text account of the industrial revolution’s creation of a working class called “the proletariat” in Marxist thought. Junior, his wide-eyed son, has no use for his father’s autocratic mien and mistreatment of workers, and one of the movie’s most audacious scenes in staging the meeting of young Engels and his future partner Mary Burns, a working class woman with then-radical ideas, as a kind of meet-cute on the father’s factory floor in the middle of a walkout. The Young Karl Marx is a well turned-out historical biography of the stern, logical, impassioned Karl Marx (August Diehl) which explores his tag-team partnership with politically simpatico German philosopher, Fredrich Engles (Stefan Konarske). Movie Review: The Young Karl Marx. (Original title: “Le jeune Karl Marx”) PRODUCTION: An AGAT Films and Cie, Velvet Film, Rohfilm GmbH, Artémis Productions prod.Producers: Nicolas Blanc, Rémi Greilety, Robert Guédiguian, Raoul Peck. Their paths cross that of famous figures of the time, like the influential reformist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (jovially played by Olivier Gourmet) and Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (a dashing Ivan Franek), who seem to instantly recognize in the two young men the wave of the future. Director: Raoul Peck By Peter Schwarz (click here for the original article). An intellectually rigorous but stylistically staid peep at the 20-something author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is at once historically impeccable and a filmic disappointment. German actor Diehl (Inglourious Basterds) is unrecognizable behind a thick black beard, but his combination of mocking gravitas, forceful intelligence and willingness to fight anyone over ideas makes him a Marx to be reckoned with. “The Young Karl Marx” — 2.5 stars [Most read] Fatal police shooting of Black man sparks protests in Minnesota » No MPAA rating (some sexuality, nudity, language and violence) Stefan Konarske is a sincere, appealing Engels. When it gets shut down and the staff is arrested, he resolves to be even more outspoken in the future. 25-year-old Marx writes incendiary articles for the Rhineland News, and upon arrest, agrees to follow a wealthy patron, Arnold Ruge, to Paris to work on his post-Hegelian philosophy and stuff. Terms of Use | As the person introducing the film noted, most of us think of a mature Karl Marx sitting in the British Library and writing "Das Kapital." Marx in particular spars, politely, with French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudon. Core conventions are upheld, as is the use of an objective camera providing the illusion of a privileged view events and an adherence to linear narrative and continuity. Berlin Film Review: ‘The Young Karl Marx’ Raoul Peck's biopic about the philosopher-muse of Communism is a drama so old school that it tames the radicalism of its subject. Marx and Engels’ thought was genuinely revolutionary, and it’s clear that Peck and Bonitzer would insist that said thought had little if anything to do with the depredations of the supposedly Marx-inspired Soviet Union. Production designer: Benoit Barouh The Young Karl Marx is not exactly exciting. In spite of some tepid reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, curiosity lured me to the screening. It’s acted well, and the soundtrack is great, keeping the more academic scenes ticking along, but you end up wishing there was more of Marx and Engels getting drunk together, and fewer shouting matches … Marx’s response to the elder statesman’s famed pronouncement “Property is theft” is an inquiry: “Whose property?”. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. The Haitian director raised some consciousness with last year’s James-Baldwin-speaks-to-today-in-his-own-words documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.” And now there’s this, a bold, some might say dialectical exercise. Engels is, despite his courage and curiosity, a bit more of a wide-eyed innocent and certainly a more organized person. The action culminates in London at the 1847 congress of the League of the Just. Regardless of support or criticism for his philosophies, his life’s work has significant influence worldwide. The Young Karl Marx makes a valiant attempt to make the philosophical cinematic, but lacks sufficient depth to tackle its complex themes. Peck seems more focused on re-creating a pregnant moment in history between the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the 1848 democratic revolutions in Europe that overthrew absolute monarchies and imperial powers. Beside him, Konarske's Engels seems positively polite, and it’s always a pleasant surprise to hear him speaking out to defend radical ideas far removed from his class and upbringing. Music: Alexei Aigui Peck has refreshingly little patience for the platitudes that govern most biopics, which often suggest that great people fashion revolutionary ideas in a bubble by divine intervention. The actors portraying these figures are all exciting to watch. August Diehl (who played a German major in “Inglourious Basterds”) is a fiery, sardonic, likable Marx. Both Krieps and Steele are well cast and perfectly able to hold their own. Editor: Frederique Broos I found this biography of Marx to be interesting. I have no regrets: The Young Karl Marx (YKM) is a rare and unusual film—beautifully-acted by a stellar cast, craftily scripted, and heavily focused on political content and character. Krieps’ Jenny has more than a touch of slyness while Hannah Steele’s Mary is appropriately fiery and proud. Overall, however, The Young Karl Marx is mercilessly dry and noble. Costume designers: Paule Mangenot Production companies: AGAT Films, Velvet Film in association with Rohfilm, Artemis Productions The repulsive violence of this typical scene sets the stage for the young Marx (August Diehl) who is in Prussia publishing indignant articles in the progressive newspaper Rheinische Zeitung. Director of photography: Kolja Brandt Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here. TWITTER It’s not unpersuasive. Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of existence! 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