Mar­tin Eden

Life’s bit­ter con­tra­dic­tions inevitably take a toll on every human being, but none more so than the writer with plen­ty of time on their hands. The men­tal cost of end­less­ly think­ing and philosophis­ing are read­i­ly appar­ent through­out Pietro Marcello’s mes­meris­ing dra­ma Mar­tin Eden, which trans­pos­es Jack London’s Oak­land-set nov­el about a self-made novelist/​poet who expe­ri­ences suc­cess and cre­ative dis­ap­point­ment dur­ing an unspe­cif­ic moment in 20^th-cen­tu­ry Naples.

Dur­ing the film’s beguil­ing open­ing sequence, Mar­cel­lo uses degrad­ed silent film footage to sig­ni­fy a tor­ment­ed, bro­ken artist slip­ping back in time to con­front his past. We see crowds of aged faces, and a train dis­ap­pear­ing into a dark tun­nel. Here, in the tex­tur­al realm of 16mm cel­lu­loid dreams, Mar­tin Eden (Luca Marinel­li) ascends the stairs of a mer­chant ship, a young man with scars on his face, the tor­so of Burt Lan­cast­er and the vis­age of a Roman god.

At this point, Mar­tin seems to careen through life almost instinc­tu­al­ly, tak­ing jobs with­out think­ing beyond the next pay­cheque, and seduc­ing women who kind­ly look his way. He even inter­venes when the dock’s local secu­ri­ty guard harass­es a young man for tres­pass­ing, lev­el­ling the for­mer with one punch.

This Good Samar­i­tan act gives him access to the wealthy Orsi­ni fam­i­ly, whose old­est daugh­ter Ele­na (Jes­si­ca Cressy) instant­ly catch­es his eye. But aside from their mutu­al phys­i­cal attrac­tion, Mar­tin sees in her the appeal of edu­ca­tion and knowl­edge. Their inter­ac­tions inspire him to think dif­fer­ent­ly about the world. To para­phrase one exchange on the sub­ject, he wants to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly bold, like Baudelaire’s poems.

Almost imme­di­ate­ly, judg­ments asso­ci­at­ed with class and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions com­pli­cate Martin’s pur­suit of becom­ing a pub­lished writer. This doesn’t stop Mar­cel­lo from infus­ing the film’s first half with the styl­is­tic ener­gy and vital­i­ty that mir­rors the character’s break­neck evo­lu­tion. Mar­co Messi­na and Sacha Ricci’s score, a con­ver­gence of clas­si­cal tones and mod­ern synch beats, plays a piv­otal role in giv­ing the film this sense of momen­tous grace.

But Martin’s infat­u­a­tion with indi­vid­u­al­ism is no doubt cloud­ed by naiveté and self-indul­gence. There are numer­ous moments when sup­port­ing char­ac­ters warn him of the cul­tur­al, social and his­tor­i­cal ten­sions that will inevitably com­pli­cate his quest to be a writer. Elder states­man poet Briss (Car­lo Cec­chi) tries to enlight­en Mar­tin about the wor­thi­ness and neces­si­ty of social­ism. A sur­ro­gate matri­arch named Maria (Car­men Pom­mel­la) once tells him: ​“I don’t dream like you. I look life straight in the face.”

That sort of blunt con­fronta­tion with life is some­thing Mar­tin goes from expe­ri­enc­ing every­day to observ­ing from afar. Like London’s dis­il­lu­sioned Amer­i­can pro­tag­o­nist, this numbs him to the insti­tu­tion­al and polit­i­cal norms that allow fas­cist move­ments and pover­ty to flour­ish. By the film’s stag­nant and dis­tress­ing con­clu­sion, all the vibran­cy that was once present has been hol­lowed out.

Martin’s hair is bleached blond, and his teeth have been stained brown. ​“Life dis­gusts me, “ he con­fess­es. But it’s his can­cer­ous arro­gance, the choice to live and cre­ate and judge from a vault­ed ide­o­log­i­cal perch, that has led him to for­get about all the wor­thy sto­ries that would inval­i­date this cyn­i­cal statement.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them. But to keep going, and grow­ing, we need your sup­port. Become a mem­ber today.