Why so much hype?

What a beautiful movie!

good back-story, and good acting

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Where it fails is a) the script and b) the very boring mis-en-scene. It. comes over as a classic 'DDR' movie - very well crafted but....no kick what's-o-ever. And the dialog...oh my;-(

I don't think that the film was terrible. It had decent cinematography, music, acting. I really enjoyed listening to so many different languages in the same film. It is watchable once, especially if somebody is interested in this topic and period of history. But I think it lacked any artistic vision or imagination, depth, or entertainment. I don't know if it was because the filmmakers wanted to stay very true to the historical facts (which would be understandable), but watching the film felt a little bit like listening to a very basic two-hour lecture about Marx and his work. The plot fell quite flat, without twists, without changes or even a real climax. (I guess Engels' speech in the end was supposed to be the climax of the film, but I only came to that conclusion after thinking about it for a while, since it didn't have too much emotional impact.) In the beginning, Marx works on articles and talks about his theories, after he meets Engels, they work on articles and talk about their theories with each other and others, finally, in the end, they still write articles, and talk about theories. So basically they do the same things and talk about the same things. Marx is having financial problems and has a loving wife, Engels doesn't have financial problems, and has a supporting girlfriend/wife throughout the whole movie. So their circumstances, their private lives do not change too much either. It is great for them, but not so great for the viewers. (Although I am sure that in reality they had quite a bit of drama in their lives, like Engels going against his father, their marriages, the effects of the financial problems, the eviction from France etc.) The glimpse we get into their private lives in a way feels too much, since it is portrayed in a rather uninteresting way, but it's too few to get to know them on a more "personal" level. It still feels like we see two characters who just walked out of the pages of a history book, as opposed to real living people with complex lives and feelings. If you want to know more about Marx, as a young guy, as a person I think this film doesn't do the job. If you want to know more about his work, or this part of history, you are better off reading a book, if you want to be entertained, than maybe it's also not the film for you. From a different point of view, for a commercial film, it's not really entertaining enough, for an art film, it doesn't have a point of view, and as a biographical film, it's probably not detailed enough.

'A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism'. These are the opening lines of the Communist Manifesto which ironically is the film's conclusion. We learn that the purpose of the opening paragraph in the manifesto was to be simple and straight to the point, while saying so much. That's what this film is and what it did so well, draw the viewer into a simple world of major importance and complexity. "Substance, but no style!" Is what I heard people say as they left the cinema. Hmm, I'm not sure if I agree...well, fully. Indeed the film had its flaws and yes, it lacked urgency to go read Marxism but what we did get was the man himself and his 'world'. The title using 'young' is realistic; a man most known for the 'birth' of communism is the premise of the film and it was super compelling. This film could have had more style sure, but what is style if there is no substance. Communism has a collaborative process so it was great to see its collaborative side through a fantastic supporting cast ushered by an intelligent screenplay, though the film may be overwhelming for some with its excessive discussion of 'Marxist' philosophy. You never see Marx in a room by himself which ignores an independent or 'hero' image that he may be associated with because he was honestly a family man who liked to chat and have a good laugh. A family man, with the help of his friends, produced the product (The Communist Manifesto) that the film ends with in its final scene and is ultimately what the film is about.

The Young Karl Marx chronicles the period when young Karl Marx meets his future long-term friend and co-author Friedrich Engels and the several following years. During the Berlinale press conference dedicated to the film Raoul Peck was asked if he read Karl Marx. He answered that he attended seminars dedicated to Marx's Capital. His film is reminiscent of such a seminar; interminable and tedious.There are many dialogues, questions, answers however the film completely lacks artistic vision. There is no interesting music, camera-work or a gripping plot.Raoul Peck tried to underline the more materialistic side of his relationship with Jenny, showing his sex life and child birth. To deprive Marx of certain romanticism is also not fair, the young philosopher was a romantic of his own kind; he was engaged for seven years to Jenny and dedicated many poems to her.The discussions depicted in the film are too primitive for such great thinkers such as Marx, Engels, Proudhon and Bakunin. The proletariat, on the other hand, is shown as a group of people with abject faces and feeble children, which makes the ideas of Marx about the proletariat too idealistic and not connected to reality.One of the positive sides of the picture is that Peck did not try to distort facts about the people in the film, however after the film finishes one feels relieved that the drawn-out seminar on Karl Marx is finally over.Read more at: http://indie-cinema.com/2017/02/young-karl-marx/