Synopsis
26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 in Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist’s son, who has been investigating the sordid birth of the British working class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx’s new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police’s repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.
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Cast
- August DiehlKarl Marx
- Stefan KonarskeFriedrich Engels
- Vicky KriepsJenny von Westphalen
- Olivier GourmetPierre Proudhon
- Hannah SteeleMary Burns
- Rolf KaniesMoses Hess
- Niels-Bruno SchmidtKarl Grün
- Alexander ScheerWilhelm Weitling
- Marie MeinzenbachLenchen
- Hans-Uwe BauerArnold Ruge
Recommendations
- 90
The New York Times
The great virtue of The Young Karl Marx is its clarity, its ability to perceive the way the eddies of personal experience flow within the wider stream of history. - 80
The Guardian
It shouldn’t work, but it does, due to the intelligence of the acting and the stamina and concentration of the writing and directing. - 80
Screen Daily
A spry romp through the seven years leading up to the drafting of the Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s biopic of Karl Marx’s early years feels like a mix between a prestige BBC drama and a Marx For Dummies primer. - 80
Los Angeles Times
Whatever else you think about Marx and his ideas, it's hard to imagine him as hot-blooded and young. Director and co-writer Raoul Peck, as it turns out, not only understands those contradictions, he is committed to embracing them, which is what makes The Young Karl Marx the audacious, engrossing film it is. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
An intellectually rigorous but stylistically staid peep at the 20-something author of Capital and The Communist Manifesto, Raoul Peck’s The Young Karl Marx is at once historically impeccable and a filmic disappointment. - 60
Variety
It’s dutiful, but it’s also superficial and polite, and it commits the genteel sin of the old biopics: It turns its hero into a plaster saint. - 58
The A.V. Club
From its lifelessly anachronistic English dialogue to its Masterpiece Theatre lighting and production design, The Young Karl Marx tries to filter radical thought through the pace and aesthetics of a middlebrow drama. - 50
IndieWire
This immaculately furnished film sacrifices too much drama in order to expound upon its characters’ ideals, and sacrifices too much exploration of those ideals in order to accommodate for a healthy degree of drama.
