The Young Karl Marx

Imag­ine, if you will, a tra­di­tion­al com­ic book ori­gin sto­ry, the type that seems to be dropped into our mul­ti­plex­es on a near-week­ly basis. Now imag­ine that, instead of some wide-eyed, spud-faced nerd learn­ing to wield his new­found super-human abil­i­ties, the heroes in ques­tion are actu­al­ly a pair of pasty, 19^th cen­tu­ry social sci­en­tists and their cos­tumes for war­fare com­prise of knee-length grey over­coats, pill­box hats and mighty beards.

The Young Karl Marx is a well turned-out his­tor­i­cal biog­ra­phy of the stern, log­i­cal, impas­sioned Karl Marx (August Diehl) which explores his tag-team part­ner­ship with polit­i­cal­ly sim­pati­co Ger­man philoso­pher, Fredrich Engles (Ste­fan Konarske). The story’s iron­ic ​“sav­ing the world” moment is the even­tu­al writ­ing of The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, and direc­tor Raoul Peck takes us on a jour­ney through hostel­ries, meet­ing halls and dust-filled attics to show how these two icon­o­clasts were able to divert the course of his­to­ry with lit­tle more than a quill and some rad­i­cal thinking.

It’s a film which goes deep on the his­to­ry of dis­course as much as it does the sub­jects them­selves. Pas­cal Bonitzer and Peck’s script doesn’t skimp on the weighty philo­soph­i­cal prose, the expres­sion of ideas and how those ideas evolve along­side the chang­ing social and eco­nom­ic cli­mate. Just as rev­o­lu­tion­ary com­mu­nism demands the right set of con­di­tions, so too does the mere utter­ance that a new polit­i­cal doc­trine is afoot which con­tains the instruc­tions and rea­son­ing behind the even­tu­al dis­man­tling of the cap­i­tal­ist system.

As enter­tain­ment, you real­ly must have a very high tol­er­ance for shots of peo­ple talk­ing in rooms, as the run­time is filled out with a lot of intense chat­ter and pro­tract­ed speechi­fy­ing. If any­thing, the film fal­ters as it offers the least rad­i­cal visu­al ren­der­ing pos­si­ble of a sto­ry about two peo­ple whose lives were fuelled by the prospect of smash­ing up the tired old frame­works. There are no mem­o­rable shots in the film and Peck sel­dom attempts to tell the sto­ry, or at least exem­pli­fy its themes, through visu­al means. It actu­al­ly looks a lot like it was made to be con­sumed on television.

Vicky Krieps, last seen wow­ing in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phan­tom Thread, deliv­ers a low key turn here as Marx’s dot­ing wife (and intel­lec­tu­al equal) Jen­ny, while the great Olivi­er Gourmet brings a sense of weary grav­i­tas as his French men­tor, Pierre-Joseph Proud­hon. Ini­tial­ly, it’s very tough going and self-seri­ous, and when a tan­gi­ble dra­ma even­tu­al­ly rears its head in the clos­ing act (how the pair intel­lec­tu­al­ly usurp the clan­des­tine rev­o­lu­tion­ary organ­i­sa­tion The League of the Just), it’s too lit­tle too late. But, the peo­ple who dig this will know straight away.