Review Of The Film The Young Karl Marx

The Young Karl Marx is the first feature film, in all that time, about Marx. That invites a small search. And that does not yield much. The first, that is a bit strongly expressed, but you see Karl Marx indeed rarely as more than a TV side figure. Even the Soviet Union did not produce hagiographic films about him, as I expected. That under the name of his character on the Internet Movie Database "from MontyPython's Flying Circus"state, is a wipe sign. Why? On the one hand perhaps because he was a communist and on the other hand probably because it is thought that your intellectual debate can not be filmed fascinatingly. Nonsense, of course, as has recently been proven once again in the historic HIV activist drama 120 BPM, in which the fierce debates between stretches and precisions yielded the most exciting scenes (in addition to the excellent sex scenes). And that also proves the accessible The Young Karl Marx, in which the moments of debate and intellectual devotion are the highlights. Unfortunately, this charming costume drama about twenties Marx (August Diehl) and Engels (Stefan Konarske), in the years that lead to the writing of the Communist Manifesto (1848), does not dare too much depth and dialectic in the discussions.

Instead, the essential political thinking steps are reduced to linear sound bites and Peck focuses primarily on the underlying emotional and personal histories of Marx and Engels. The Communist Manifesto was the accessible version of Marx's doctrine intended to whip up as large an audience as possible. I once read that. Das Kapital not - too fat, and too tough, I suspected. Has Peck wanted to do the same with The Young Karl Marx? Making the essence of the learning accessible to the widest possible audience - and thus simplifying everything? Is this his communist manifesto? "In a certain sense," agrees Peck during a conversation at the Berlinale, where his film premiered at the beginning of this year. It is an understandable choice, in itself, but during the conversation he unintentionally proves the opposite: precisely the more Peck teaches about the content, the essence of the ideas, the more interesting it becomes. But that is not the reason that we gradually raise our voices during the conversation. This is because we are being drowned out more and more by bubbling young adults with shiny evening dresses and ringing champagne glasses in the luxurious lobby that was booked for the interview. Just before I sit across from Peck, I see someone next to me get a watch of a thousand euros from a display case. "Really? Oh, wow, welcome to the capitalist world!", Responds Peck. "But, of course, we see that every day, we just do not think about it, we accept that inequality apparently goes with it." We - but he is not. Peck is an activist filmmaker. And all his films, including I Am Not Your Negro and Lumumba (2000), are in his eyes connected. "

In the old days you had slavery, in the feudal time serpent, and in the capitalist times the salarist Marx teaches us that great wealth always produces great poverty, and as someone born in a poor country like Haiti, I know that I got to know Marx when I first came to Berlin to study at the age of 17. I went back to the scientific Marx, the economist, and I had Das Kapital for four years.studied at the Freie Universität and that changed everything. That text is written. Marx never wrote anything that he could not prove. He used figures, statistics: how many people produce goods? how are they paid ?; where does the profit go?; etcetera. If you know all those figures, you understand society. Marx taught me how to argue and learn to look for the roots of what you are studying. To look behind the truth that you think you know. "That is the background of his film. But Peck's goal is something else". It's a great story, of course: young people who decide to change the world and then do that, partly for the worse, but this film is not about Marxism, because it has nothing to do with Marx. Marx and Engels were free spirits and bon vivants: they were the first to be executed during the Russian Revolution, but they left us instruments that we can still use today, no, because they are about what is still the basis of our society.