When Nietzsche Wept

This movie is surreal. Literally, it has a lot of surrealistic scenes to mess with your mind, but also the whole presentation is surreal because there are so many bizarre angles. At its heart, it's a sober portrayal of depression and humanity's discontent (so you'd think it would be slow & heavy). But mostly it's humorous, at times as silly as the movie "Airplane!". It also features historical references, but you can't help feeling that the writer is being deliberately playful, distorting facts right before our eyes with a wink and a smile. In all, I think it's an entertaining experience, especially if you don't take it too seriously.

It definitely has the qualities of a period piece romp, like maybe "Casanova" (2005), "Molière" (2007) or one of my faves, "Impromptu" (1991) about Chopin. But "When Neitzsche Wept" has a more subtle tone which prevents me from saying it's intended to be a comedy like the others I mentioned. Also, don't expect a biopic because it's not really about any particular man so much as it's about everyman's internal struggle between passion (freedom) and logic (duty).

This film takes a somewhat light-hearted approach to a very dark subject, and I think that's what makes it unusual and clever. It's entertaining and digestible, but also there are a few powerful monologues delivered by Neitzsche (Armand Assante) that I had to rewind and hear again because they seemed to appear out of nowhere. Then suddenly we're back to a crazy scene of a redhead woman in diapers jumping around a crib. Don't worry, it all makes sense; it's just... surreal!

The first thing to make you judge well is that you know this movie is built on a fiction novel just like "The last temptation of Christ", so it's not real and not meant to say anything about the real Freud or Bruer or Nietzsche themselves.

you just have to fall deep into this good story and be sure it's a very touching one, as you know how a very strong man can cry over a moment, one moment.... nothing like you ever can expect.

I found the dreams amazingly directed as you know most directors make silly dream scenes, and the music also was just a very wise pick since nothing made but just picked from known and famous classics, that made it closer to the ear.

i suggest it as a-must-see movie

Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud did work together and they did collaborate on a book about Anna O, who was most likely Bertha. Lou Salome did have relationships with Nietzsche and Freud and many others. All of these things are true.

But, Breuer did not treat Nietzsche. That is in the author's (Irvin D. Yalom) imagination, and what a great imagination it was. The story makes a super philosopher seem human, with frailties that we all suffer. It also makes for an interesting story of how psychoanalysis came about. I can imagine that it really did develop this way as Breuer and Feud discovered what worked and what didn't. We see free association or "chimney sweeping" as Bertha called it, we certainly see transference, and much more as the discipline developed.

Ben Cross was excellent, Armand Assante gave the best performance I have ever seen from him, Jamie Elman let us see Feud as a young man, Katheryn Winnick certainly makes me want to see her again, and Michal Yannai was delightful.

A great period piece that will delight all who care about philosophy and psychology.

Its not a tremendous film, a must see, of a picture at his own, When Nitszche Wept is very good driven style of fan fiction, that manage to get us near to a lot of Niche, and Freud, concepts -but in reality is only near, because as lots of book-film adaptations, it takes a to much of the director's point of view-, it gets it right in some moments and is not a waste of time at all, but it suffers from his flaws, the nature of art, is specific to each category it belongs, this is most like and homage, and want us to remember very important things, and don't care about being very technical with the acting, the passing, or the writing itself, it's made great with the cameos that it have, and the good vibe the producers have toward those beautiful mind that they were, but maybe fails, to stand alone as film,

It is not a great movie. It is not a masterpiece. It may be boring and fake at first sight. But... A film about a Nietsche. Not very different of the philosopher. The character is seductive, power and Armand Assante is brilliant in his skin. The atmosphere is carefully recreated. Colors, gestures, social conceptions are pieces of a small visual museum. So, the movie is a good introduction to understand the shadows of XIX century end. For look the existence with the eyes of men of a special way to discover the essence of to be. Certainly, the film gives only sketches of great people. Lou Salome is more than strange muse of a philosopher and Nietsche is prophet in another sense than the character. No bad, no extraordinary. Only good subject of reflection. And introduction to cultural scene.