The Young Karl Marx (2017)

The Young Karl Marx is a German, French, Belgian co-production in English, French and German that tells (appropriately given its title) the story of a young Karl Marx, and his friendship with Friedrich Engels over the years 1843 to 1848. Marx and Engels had apparently meet once before the action this movie depicts started, and they didn't get along at first, but became fast friends thereafter, history could have been really different if they hadn't. The film starts around the birth of that friendship and ends in one of the most foreboding scenes in cinema with the two gaining control of the Christian communist organization The League of the Just switching its name to The Communist League and replacing its motto "All men are brothers" with "Workers of all Nations unite".

Well Marxism is "in" right now, and I thought this movie was going to be more pro, but it really wasn't. The film is neither laudatory or particularly harsh (because to be honest how much responsibility does Karl really have in what people did with his writings 30 plus years after his death, he might have been horrified) but just presents the things he did pretty objectively. He is of course humanized, because you see him with his wife and daughters and friends, but he's not apologized for, more then one character in the film refers to Marx as being a very difficult person, because he undoubtedly was. It is interesting to see these stories, of which I was only vaguely familiar acted out, though you could doubtless get more of events by reading biographies or histories of the movement. More satisfying as a collection of scenes then as a movie, I still felt some accomplishment for having watched the whole thing. You can actually watch it, and legally even, through YouTube, the true opiate of the masses. *** Also Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps, from my favorite movie of 2017 The Phantom Thread is in this as Mrs. Marx.