Stop acting like a dick, Martin
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021
#42 : Martin Eden
Excellent Italian adaptation of Jack London’s 1909 thrilling tale, which follows the ascent of a proletarian novelist to popular success that proves a bitter disappointment.
Hmmm - a "thrilling tale" from 1909 about "the ascent of a proletarian novelist to popular success". Why is my pulse not quickening at the prospect? It's all feeling a bit "literary" and, whilst there are obvious exceptions (which I can't think of just at the minute. Errr, Dangerous Liaisons was OK, I guess - he says, picking a recent example from 1988!), such movies tend not to hit the spot with me. But we'll see...
Martin is obviously a bit of a rough diamond who falls in with a decent family and decides he want to improve his lot. But society isn't going to make it easy for him. Nor, I fear is the film going to make it easy for me - I suspect some usage of the double speed playback option is going to be required before long. Yes, he spends far too long moping about as a struggling writer that it still looks ponderous played at double speed. And then he gets successful and ranty (and far too wordy), which is more entertaining at double speed, at least. And then there's a very silly ending.
The main problem is that Martin isn't very likeable - he's a tortured artist and I think we've all met enough of them to know they're always a pain in the ass. But neither is anyone else in the film very likeable really. Which doesn't make for a very enjoyable film - and I think I found this more of a drag than most because stuff did actually happen in it and you had to pay some kind of attention, but then you found yourself not liking whatever was happening or whoever was doing it. It's also not clear to me exactly what the film wants to be - it has some political elements, some literary elements and some romantic elements, but makes very little effort to gel them together. I think overall it was trying to make me understand that all the success in the world won't bring your happiness and you can't escape your past. Or something - I fear I missed the exact message.
It has a bizarre "hand held documentary" shaky camera style, which I assume is intentional but I can't say I'm massively convinced by it. At times it reminded me of an Inspector Montalbano episode - but without the interesting police work or the likeable characters, obviously. It does make some interesting use of some lovely old film footage - I've no idea what it's signifying though and it seems to appear at the bizarrest times.
The acting is fine - Martin is an odd character and played completely over the top, but I can't really blame Luca Marinelli for that. Jessica Cressy as Elena (his main love interest) is a bit wet but again I don't feel I can blame her. So I'm going to lay the blame at director Pietro Marcello's door - I'm afraid I won't be searching out any of his other work.
Finally, I'm going to include the following sentence from Wikipedia because it amused me "Martin Eden grossed $0 in North America and $2.8 million in other territories" - I suspect they just didn't bother showing it in the US, but it would have been funnier if they'd put it in theatres and nobody turned up.
Overall, this seemed like a mediocre and confusing film to me so I'm struggling to understand why it made the list. Sorry!
If you want to watch it after that glowing review then, at the time of writing, it's available to rent at most of the usual channels. But don't say I didn't warn you.
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