Young Karl Marx, The
Young Karl Marx, The
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Synopsis

In the mid-1800s, after decades of the scientific and economic march of the Industrial Revolution has created an age of both new prosperity and new problems, a 26-year-old writer, researcher and radical named Karl Marx embarks, with his wife Jenny, on the road to exile. In Paris in 1844 they meet young Friedrich Engels, the well-to-do son of a factory owner whose studies and research has exposed the poor wages and worse conditions of the new English working class who operate looms, printing presses and other engines of industry that enrich their owners while punishing laborers. The smooth and sophisticated--but equally revolutionary and radical--Engels brings his research, help and resources to provide Marx with the missing piece to the puzzle that composes his new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and police raids, riots and political upheavals, they will preside over the birth of the labor movement turning far-flung and unorganized idealists and dreamers into a united force with a common goal. Raoul Peck---France---2017---118 mins

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  • Currently 1/5 Stars.
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  | Coco#1

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 5 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’s an unmemorable, 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 killed by police on horseback for gathering fallen branches; an act of theft; then turns into a bad B rated male bonding film. Within minutes of meeting Marx, Engels calls him out of nowhere, “A genius" (although we in the audience are stumped to know why) and from then on they become best buddies; acting like "hip", well-dressed, irresponsible, and 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. The director instead transformed the Europe of the 1840's to resemble the superficiality and shallowness of the 21st century. Never do we experience the overwhelming suffering of the workers of the time.

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  • Currently 2/5 Stars.
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  | JohnH#1

Marx before he had his trademark beard. Could just as well been called Young Marx and Engels. Set in the 1840s, but I had a feeling that I was watching a batch of 1960s student radicals. I don't think that this film will rehabilitate Marx or Marxism.

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