''The Young Karl Marx'' (french: Le jeune Karl Marx; german: Der junge Karl Marx) is a 2017
historical
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
film about
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
, directed by Haitian filmmaker and political activist
Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck (born 9 September 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is a Haitian filmmaker, of both documentary and feature films. He is known for using historical, political, and personal characters to tackle and recount societal issues and historical ...
, co-written by Peck and Pascal Bonitzer, and starring
August Diehl
August Diehl (; born 4 January 1976) is a German actor, primarily known to international audiences for playing Gestapo major Dieter Hellstrom in Quentin Tarantino's ''Inglourious Basterds'' and Michael "Mike" Krause, Evelyn Salt's husband, in the ...
. It had its world premiere at the
67th Berlin International Film Festival
The 67th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 9 to 18 February 2017 with Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven as President of the Jury. '' Django'', directed by Etienne Comar, opened the festival. The Golden Bear was awarded to the ...
on 12 February 2017.
Plot
While in his 20s, Karl Marx struggles to establish himself as a writer of political and sociological importance. The film begins with a scene where poor people are gathering dead wood in a forest where they have done this for centuries, but the government has made it illegal to collect the wood as it is now legally private property of the landlords. The poor are persecuted and extrajudicially killed by the government officials. Marx wrote about these events and believes that the
bourgeois class has taken ownership of the state itself.
Marx meets Friedrich Engels, a young man whose wealthy father owns factories. Engels' belief that the workers there and elsewhere, including children, are mistreated and underpaid matures. The men begin to work together to create a new political movement to reform and unite the impoverished workers. Eventually, the two stage a coup during a meeting of the
League of the Just
The League of the Just (German: ''Bund der Gerechten'') or League of Justice was a Christian communist international revolutionary organization. It was founded in 1836 by branching off from its ancestor, the League of Outlaws (German: ''Bund der ...
and create the
Communist League
The Communist League (German: ''Bund der Kommunisten)'' was an international political party established on 1 June 1847 in London, England. The organisation was formed through the merger of the League of the Just, headed by Karl Schapper, and t ...
in its place. The film ends with Marx and Engels publishing select theories, in a simple language for anyone to understand in a relatively short writing known as ''
The Communist Manifesto
''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Commu ...
'' the same year of the
1848 revolutions
The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europe ...
.
Cast
*
August Diehl
August Diehl (; born 4 January 1976) is a German actor, primarily known to international audiences for playing Gestapo major Dieter Hellstrom in Quentin Tarantino's ''Inglourious Basterds'' and Michael "Mike" Krause, Evelyn Salt's husband, in the ...
as
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...
*
Stefan Konarske as
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ,["Engels"](_blank)
'' Vicky Krieps
Vicky Krieps (born 4 October 1983) is a Luxembourgish-German actress. She has appeared in a number of American, Luxembourgish, French and German productions. Krieps' breakthrough role was in Paul Thomas Anderson's Academy Award-winning film ''Pha ...
as
Jenny von Westphalen
*
Olivier Gourmet
Olivier Gourmet (born 22 July 1963) is a Belgian actor.
Gourmet was born in Namur. He won the Best Actor award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival for his role in '' Le Fils'' by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. He also appeared in '' La Promess ...
as
Pierre Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, , ; 15 January 1809, Besançon – 19 January 1865, Paris) was a French socialist,Landauer, Carl; Landauer, Hilde Stein; Valkenier, Elizabeth Kridl (1979) 959 "The Three Anticapitalistic Movements". ''European Soci ...
*
Hannah Steele as
Mary Burns
*
Alexander Scheer
Alexander Scheer (born 1 June 1976 in East Berlin) is a German actor and musician. He has won several national awards for his performances in film and theater, including one German Film Award for "Best Actor in a Leading Role" and one Bavarian F ...
as
Wilhelm Weitling
Wilhelm Christian Weitling (October 5, 1808 – January 25, 1871) was a German tailor, inventor, radical political activist and one of the first theorists of communism. Weitling gained fame in Europe as a social theorist before he emigrated ...
*
Hans-Uwe Bauer
Hans-Uwe Bauer (born 26 August 1955) is a German actor. He appeared in more than ninety films since 1979.
Filmography Film
References
External links
*
1955 births
Living people
German male film actors
{{Germany-actor-stub ...
as
Arnold Ruge
Arnold Ruge (13 September 1802 – 31 December 1880) was a German philosopher and political writer. He was the older brother of Ludwig Ruge.
Studies in university and prison
Born in Bergen auf Rügen, he studied in Halle, Jena and Heidelberg. ...
*
Michael Brandner as
Joseph Moll
*
Ivan Franěk
Ivan Franěk (born 17 June 1964), sometimes credited as Ivan Franeck, is a Czech film and television actor.
Early life and education
He was born in Plzeň, Czechoslovakia. Franěk moved to France in 1989.
Career
His first major role was appe ...
as
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (; 1814–1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary s ...
*
Peter Benedict
Peter Benedict (born Christian Riss; 13 July 1963) is an Austrian actor, director and writer.
Early life
Peter Benedict was born Christian Riss in Chur, Switzerland. He is the only son of actors Walter Riss and Christa Rossenbach. He grew up ...
as Friedrich Engels Sr.
*
Niels-Bruno Schmidt as
Karl Grün
*
Marie Meinzenbach as
Lenchen
*
Eric Godon
Eric Godon (born 7 February 1959) is a Belgian character actor, director and writer. Recognisable by his burly appearance and deep voice, he is perhaps best known in English language circles, for his roles in ''In Bruges'', and '' The Missing'' ...
as The foreman
*
Stephen Hogan
Stephen Hogan is an Irish actor and audiobook narrator.
Biography
Hogan was born in August 1965 and grew up in Darty, Dublin, Ireland. Hogan says he studied architecture at Edinburgh University but upon graduating did not see himself in tha ...
as Thomas Naylor
*
Rolf Kanies
Rolf Kanies (born 21 December 1957) is a German actor who played many high-profile roles on the stage before switching to a career in film and television in 1997. Since then Rolf has specialized in German and international film and television. M ...
as
Moses Hess
Moses (Moritz) Hess (21 January 1812 – 6 April 1875) was a German-Jewish philosopher, early communist and Zionist thinker. His socialist theories led to disagreements with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He is considered a pioneer of Labor ...
*Ulrich Brandhoff as
Hermann Kriege
Hermann Kriege (1820-1850) was a German American revolutionary and journalist of the first half of the 19th century.
His journalistic activities supporting socialist ideas caused him to be arrested and jailed in 1844. After serving his sentence ...
*Aran Bertetto as Paddy
Reception
Critical reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 51 reviews, and an average rating of 6/10. 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." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 62 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
s review by
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''.
Early life and education
Bradshaw was educated at Haberdasher ...
gave the film four out of five stars and stated, "It shouldn't work, but it does, due to the intelligence of the acting and the stamina and concentration of the writing and directing." In a review for ''
Inside Higher Ed
''Inside Higher Ed'' is a media company and online publication that provides news, opinion, resources, events and jobs focused on college and university topics. In 2022, Quad Partners, a private equity firm, sold Inside Higher Education to Tim ...
'', Scott McLemee described the film as "a nuanced and surprisingly accurate portrait of the revolutionary as a young man", noting its faithfulness to the historical record. Writing for the ''
New Statesman
The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...
'',
Suzanne Moore described the film as "sparky, brave and totally absorbing" and "in many ways a conventional biopic, lifted by its performances, and by its insistence that ideas matter".
A.O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott (born July 10, 1966) is an American journalist and cultural critic. He has been chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' since 2004, a title he shares with Manohla Dargis.
Early life
Scott was born on July 10, 1966 in ...
of the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' regarded it as being "both intellectually serious and engagingly free-spirited."
Awards and nominations
Traverse City Film Festival
The Traverse City Film Festival is an annual film festival held at the end of July in Traverse City, Michigan. The festival was created as an annual event in 2005 to help “save one of America's few indigenous art forms—the cinema". The event ...
*''Founders Grand Prize'': 2017
Home Video
The film has been released on Blu-ray and DVD in areas of Europe, though these releases are reported to lack English subtitles for extensive passages of dialogue in German or French, and are region-locked. A Region 1 DVD has been released for the North American market which includes English subtitles.
See also
* ''
Marx Reloaded
''Marx Reloaded'' is a 2011 German documentary film written and directed by the British writer and theorist Jason Barker. Featuring interviews with several well-known philosophers, the film aims to examine the relevance of Karl Marx's ideas in re ...
''
*
Karl Marx in film
Karl Marx and his ideas have been represented in film in genres ranging from documentary to fictional drama, art house and comedy.
The Marxist theories of socialism, communism, class struggle, ideology and political economy influenced early ...
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young Karl Marx, The
2017 films
2017 biographical drama films
2017 multilingual films
2010s English-language films
2010s French-language films
2010s German-language films
2010s historical drama films
Belgian biographical drama films
Belgian historical drama films
Belgian multilingual films
Biographical films about philosophers
Biographical films about revolutionaries
Cultural depictions of Karl Marx
English-language Belgian films
English-language French films
English-language German films
Films about communism
Films directed by Raoul Peck
Films set in the 19th century
Films shot in Brandenburg
Films shot in Brussels
France 3 Cinéma films
French biographical drama films
French historical drama films
French multilingual films
German biographical drama films
German historical drama films
German multilingual films
2010s French films
2010s German films