Martin Eden

I am at a disadvantage not having read Jack London's book. Therefore, I do not know if the credit for the end sequence should be attributed to London or to the film's co-scriptwriters--Maurizio Braucci and director Pietro Marcello. Because that end-sequence is absolutely well developed and unforgettable. The choice of music (Bach and Debussy) and the performances of two male actors--Luca Marinelli and Carlo Cecchi--are the mainstay of this film. The Venice (Best Actor), Toronto (Platform Prize), Ghent (Best Direction), Faro Island (Best Adapted Screenplay Award) international film festivals have spotted the golden veins of the film.

Pros: Great photography, successful original mix of new and old footage, entertaining.

Cons: Everything goes well, until halfway the film gets to the essence of things. That is when the contradiction starts, disappointing superficial (childish) arguments empty of essence, and the poor viewer who identified with the main character, feels betrayed up until the pointless unoriginal ending of the movie.

In short, it's a self-contradicting film based on the flawed approach of the original author of the novel (Jack London) who even admitted "I must have bungled it", and was made worse by the filmmaker. The writers (the director Pietro Marcello along with Maurizio Braucci ) even added a known politically misleading cliche-phrase as-a-fact, -that doesn't exist on the book, and is worth mentioning here since the movie has a pseudo-political narrative: "Philosophy was born because the Ancient Greeks were able to avoid physical labor thanks to their slaves who allowed them to devote themselves exclusively to thought."

-Why then philosophy wasn't born somewhere else, where slavery was flourishing in the whole known world for centuries? -Why philosophy that set man on its center for the first time in history, was born after democracy was invented and established for the first (and only) time and shifted all power to the people? -Why philosophy was born on a state that gave the slaves more privileges than the privileges of the citizens of the rest of the world, and conversion of a citizen to slave was prohibited by law (and all slaves were foreigners brought from abroad and had equal rights with every citizen except voting)? So, was philosophy born due to the slaves in Ancient Athens, or due to the fact that democracy freed thought for the first time, logic and rhetoric was born, schools of thought, that attracted all wise men from around the world to see, learn and contribute to the "miracle"?

So, please try not to parrot false, misleading cliche, especially the ones about history, it's neither good for you, or your viewers.

It was a good, interesting film throughout. But it kind of lost me in the last half hour. I can't give it a wholehearted recommendation.

Much of "Martin Eden" is quite good, but I simply got tired of this movie by the time it was over. Luca Marinelli is excellent but exhausting as the title character, a struggling writer who champions freedom of the individual in a country (Italy) whose working class population advocates for socialism. His ideas make him unpopular with just about everybody -- he's not socialist enough for the working class, but he's too critical of the wealthy to be accepted by the rich family of the woman he loves. He becomes a hugely successful writer, but a mess of a person.

"Martin Eden" doesn't take place in any specific time period, or rather it takes place across all time periods, a nod I suppose to the fact that the conflict between those who are wealthy and those who are not has been and will be with us forever. It also examines the role art and artists play in shaping cultural and political thought. It's an artful movie, but it overstays its welcome. Martin Eden is an intense character and not an especially pleasant one to spend time with, and good as Marinelli is, he can't save the last third or so of the movie from being a bit of a slog.

Grade: B

I left the cinema with a strong emotional bond with the protagonist. The story seems to surface from a documentary, with several reference to post-ww2 Italy: music, people, strip of homemade tapes. But the pace, the rhythm, the editing, is not a documentary one, it sometime remembers a music-clip. The more you sip form the environment, the more its flavour changes, because the situation changes, and so does the main actor. It is really easy to bend to its arch, and little by little you find yourself absorbed into his prospective, his vision, his twists.