Total Eclipse

Total Eclipse is the story of the relationship between two men who definitely made their mark on French literature. Poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud have been compared to Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, but aside from being gay the pairs have little in common. Wilde is a universally recognized talent who had the misfortune to fall in love with a spoiled young aristocrat in Douglas who had some pretenses to literary talent. Douglas was spoiled, but both he and Wilde conducted themselves well in public.

Verlaine and Rimbaud were a pair of talented louts as Total Eclipse shows us in graphic detail. Wilde married for convention's sake at the time and did have two sons and was a loving husband. His is a Victorian Brokeback Mountain story. Verlaine was a drunk and an abusive husband who regularly beat on his wife and child who was totally fascinated by young Rimbaud. He was ten years older than Rimbaud in real life, the film does make him seem a great deal older. He did read some of Rimbaud's work as a teenage prodigy and sent for the country lad. You can feel sorry for Wilde and do in the films that tell his story. Verlaine as played by David Thewlis is a really hateful person, gay audiences can't work up any sympathy for him.

However Rimbaud as played by Leonardo DiCaprio by look and talent makes you perfectly understand why Rimbaud became so obsessed with him. Verlaine was a political man, he was a supporter of the Paris Commune and was in fear of the police who would have loved to nail him on a morals charge if not on a political one. Rimbaud didn't have a political opinion in the world, he was a peasant kid from the Ardennes who partied hardy, drove Verlaine crazy and jealous, but both learned and fed off each other artistically. I found it interesting that Rimbaud and Verlaine flee to Great Britain of all places to be freer, the same place that in the next generation would persecute poor Oscar Wilde.

DiCaprio and Thewlis play a couple of louts, but a fascinating pair of louts. Total Eclipse has both these guys eclipsing the supporting cast around them, that probably is the main weakness of the film. Still fans of both men shouldn't miss this film.

Of course there is pain and monstrosity in love. Two wild poets would need to live that out. But can a movie about it make any sense, without a fair portion of their poetry?

Michelangelo said that painting excels when it approaches sculpture, and sculpture when it comes close to relief. An art form is enhanced when nearing its periphery, almost turning into another art form. Along this line, I am sure that the poetry of Rimbaud and Verlaine would have stood forward excellently, when recited in the movie about their relation. It would also have helped in making their interactions understandable.

After seeing the movie a second time, I read some of Rimbaud's writings, and there was a slightly different character emerging from his words, than the one portrayed, though excellently, by Leonardo DiCaprio. Rimbaud's own words show that he was a victim just as much as a predator. Of course, he would say so, himself, but also: this modification would have made the movie rise beyond the black and white polarity it is too often caught in.

Still, I enjoyed the movie tremendously, mostly thanks to Leo and the way he made his character fire up. He might have been type-cast, to do the obnoxious adolescent, but they got more than they bargained for - he included the most important aspect of Rimbaud: the prodigy poet, the artist living for art, loving for art.

His acting is sometimes stunning, and not only in delicate scenes where minute nuances are essential, but also in all kinds of silliness in between. To hear him bark like a dog, really like a dog - did he do that himself, or was there an added sound effect? The pause, and the slightly humorous expression on his face, right before he tells his fellow poet that he expects more from him than his words. His posture and cocky moving about in the Paris of the noble poets, and his running on all four in the countryside. Brilliant acting.

There's a lot of formidable acting also on behalf of the others in the cast, even when the script and the direction works against them. And it does, more than once. Maybe the plot got all confused, simply because the poetry of the poets was not taken into account.

But a film gone awry can still be a wonderful experience. Frustrating, but wonderful. This one is.

It's a good thing not too many people saw this film when it came out [no pun intended], because, if any of DiCaprio's female fans had seen him in this, one of his best early roles, his career would have been over well before he was involved in "Titanic." And that's because he's so utterly convincing as the tortured, bisexual teen genius poet Arthur Rimbaud, that it would undoubtedly set many of those young ladies to wondering if he'd played the part a little TOO well, if you get my meaning. If ever there was any such thing as a male femme fatale, It's Leo right here. Rumor has it that he tried to have the video pulled a few years ago, right after his "Titanic" success. It's a good thing he wasn't successful, because I think that this film rates right along with "The Basketball Diaries" as possibly his best performance.

But it takes two to tango, at least in this case, and David Thewlis is almost as good opposite DiCaprio as Paul Verlaine, who began as Rimbaud's mentor and wound up as his long-time lover. As Verlaine was ugly and overweight, whereas Rimbaud was lithe and handsome, the two seemingly would have made an unbelieveably odd couple physically, but were drawn together more by their mutual likes and dislikes rather than physical attraction. And that's what you sense through all of their scenes together, a meeting of minds more than a meeting of bodies.

There were many who praised this movie, there were many who hated it, but love it or hate it, it holds a strange fascination which makes you remember it long after you've seen it.

This is a worthy and successful attempt to make a film about the famous literary and personal relationship between two great poets, Paul Verlaine and the young Arthur Rimbaud. How the French must have resented its being made in English! (But why did the French themselves never film this story, which is so fundamental to the mythology of their literature?) There is no use viewers and reviewers complaining that the characters are disgusting: everybody knows they were, and they would have been the first to admit it. This film has not been made for the wrong reasons, with fictional characters, but is a true story. It is rather disturbing to realize that absinthe has been legalised again and people are drinking it once more, when we see how it drove these two poets insane, which is what is really does, you know! The banning of absinthe should never have been lifted. It may be a pretty green colour, but it is not romantic or at all glamorous. One strange omission from this film is any of the poetry of either poet! Very few decent translations of Verlaine into English exist, because he used rhyme so much. But he was a great and soaring poet, and of course Rimbaud shattered all the moulds and basically founded modern poetry, and had the status of a god to the Surrealists. So it would have been good to hear some of their work, especially as it is all out of copyright and no one could have objected. The lack of the poetry stops people who do not already know it from appreciating the point of all this carrying-on. Verlaine and Rimbaud were appalling, violent, disorderly, and to call them extreme Bohemians doesn't go far enough: they were both quite mad as well. But then, many poets are, and often the finest poetry comes from the ones who are the craziest (David Gascoyne, whom I knew well, is an example, and Ezra Pound whom I knew less well was not what you could call well-balanced). It is often said that there is a fine line between genius and madness, but with poets, the situation is even more dire: to be a divinely inspired poet it seems that it is almost a requirement that you first lose your mind. (Exceptions are those with no fire in their temperament at all: Eliot, Perse, Valery, or those who have become spiritual beings while still on earth, such as Rilke.) Well, the performances and direction are excellent here. Agnieszka Holland is an inspired director, a protégé of Wajda, and perhaps her greatest achievement was 'Washington Square' (1997). She is interested in art, not commerce, and congratulations to her for that! The young Leonardo Di Caprio, aged 20, was a scintillating, wild, and wholly convincing Rimbaud. You could believe every scene. David Thewlis was equally convincing as Verlaine, despite being rather too thin for the part (Verlaine was stockier and plumper, and Thewlis looks like he hasn't had a decent meal for ten years). Romane Bohringer was an excellent choice for Verlaine's wife, and plays it just right. The next year she would make her staggering pair of films, 'L'Appartement' and 'Portraits Chinois', in both of which she sets the cinema on fire. So the talent is there, and the film is delivered. If we find these people disturbing, it is because they were. But without this bizarre tale, twentieth century poetry would not have come into existence, because it was created by Arthur Rimbaud, and without Verlaine taking him under his wing it would never have happened. Christopher Hampton's screenplay is intelligent and thoughtful and well-crafted throughout. But then, that is what he does. It is good to have this on the screen, but for those who do not already know the story, it must be a real shocker. It is also not a film for 'homophobes', and if you don't want to see Leonard Di Caprio kissing a man on the mouth, look away now.

"Total Eclipses" narrates the romance that is born among the poets Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis, in a courageous and excellent performance, Thewlis plays strong scenes with experience and professionalism) and Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo Di Caprio, before being thrown to the Hollywood's stardom in "Titanic"). The film documents, without make-ups,Paul Verlaine's slow destruction,a man who is consumed by the love and hate that he fells for Rimbauld.Director Agniezka Holland accomplished a touching and beautiful work,counting with a perfect plasticity that reconstitutes the time and the romance among the two men in a detailed way and without shame, what can,in fact,shock Di Caprio's fans in some delicate moments.Even being a little slow in a lot of parts of the story, "Total Eclipse" is efficient when its seen as a drama that lectures about the difficulty of being homosexual, but besides this topic, it analyzes what happens when people abdicate of their happiness and suffer due to social conventions, and finally it ends up in a intelligent conclusion:that only through the courage and through the love it's possible not only to break such barriers but also to achieve redemption.Director Agnieszka Holland conducts with experience a story that, in the hands of another director, could be reduced into a common and not very innovative denominator, and the lenses of her camera shows, without make-ups and courts to alleviate the impact of the scenes, the whole suffering, the prejudice and the pain that marks the relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine. The two poets' love is realistically developed by Holland, starting by the friendship, in which the two writers begin to know important things about theirselves and discover that they have a lot in common, in terms that both are unhappy with the path their lives acquired, the doubts, the fears and the frustrations,till the beginning of the romance. The scene in which the first kiss happens, when Rimbauld seduces Verlaine and tries to get closer to him and ease his nervousness,is strong,touching and beautiful,this decisive and provocative part is filmed and written in a sweet and human way. The focus that the production gives to the story, therefore,is natural and realistic, what can scare many people away of the box- offices for the context declaredly homosexual of the story."Total Eclipse" explores and studies the relationship without making concessions and without allowing any demagogy or fear. There are rough scenes such as the one in which Thewlis is tirelessly sodomized by Di Caprio, there are moments of fondness when the two kiss each other,but in the same way the sick and morbid aspect of the relationship is expressed, when, for example, Rimbauld stabs Rimbaud's hand to prove his love.Being a heterosexual, i concluded that, instead of adopting a dogmatic and racist posture, it would be better if i could appreciate the film not as just another plot about two gay guys who are in love but I tried to enlarge my point of view, understanding that the film was, actually, a simple feeble love history marked by the suffering and resignation. Thus, I recommend "Total Eclipse" as an intelligent and efficient drama, a work that deserves to be applauded by its initiative and courage, for the excellent performances and for the safe and kind work by Agnieszka Holland, who tells a love story in a distressing and realist form. "Total Eclipses" i rated for strong sexuality and nudity, language, and some startling violence and it runs 111 minutes.The Cast: David Thewlis, Romane Bohringer and Leonardo Di Caprio.