Mark Reviews Movies: MARTIN EDEN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 15, 2020

Director Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden is a parable about self-discovery, knowledge, love, and, most prominently, a lot of politics. The screenplay, written by the director and Maurizio Braucci, transplants Jack London's novel of the same name from early 20th century California to an unspecified time in Naples, Italy, as liberals and socialists and connected bosses/magistrates battle for the direction of the country.

Our poor—both in terms of socioeconomic position and his fate—protagonist doesn't so much get caught up in the middle as he tries to set himself apart from every crowd surrounding him. It does not, as one would anticipate, turn out well for him.

There's a lot more, though, to this tale, which subverts a kind of belated coming-of-age story into a study of how frivolous a country's political soul can be, and this character, who is certainly passionate and seemingly intelligent but seems trapped by the personal preferences of a self-taught education. Martin Eden (Luca Marinelli, in a vibrant performance) appears as an admirable figure at first—inspired by love to improve his standing in society and achieve a newly discovered dream.

Then, he reads a single volume of Herbert Spencer, who saw evolution as the universal law of everything in the world—from animals to humans, from the order of nature to the social order, from the gradual biological development of everything on the planet to humankind's history—and coined the phrase "survival of the fittest." As far as we can tell, this is Martin's first encounter with philosophy, and we can definitely tell that he never bothers to read anything else on the subject.

In case it isn't clear by now, this film digs deeply into assorted politics—the various thinking behind them, debates about them, the consequences of one or another, as well as the personal and societal results of those arguments and a seemingly inevitable move away from the complex toward something that's easy to comprehend, no matter how shallow or dangerous that way of thinking might be. It's overwhelming at times, really, but Marcello's storytelling remains focused on the main character's journey and a sense of mounting dread for how that man might influence society as a whole.

Martin begins as a ship worker, having labored as such since he was 11 years old. He drinks, parties, gets into fights (his face and neck have a few scars), lives with his sister (played by Autilia Ranieri) and tyrannical brother-in-law (played by Marco Leonardi), and goes from one job to the next. He quickly beds—well, a makeshift one of his coat atop a pile of ropes—Margherita (Denise Sardisco), whom he will abandon and to whom he will return much later, but after he saves a young man from a security guard on the dock, Elena Orsini (Jessica Cressy), the guy's sister, becomes the figure of his absolute affection.

She comes from a wealthy family, and he wants that social standing. Elena convinces him to restart his education, but pride and fear keep Martin from going back to school. Instead, he becomes an autodidact, devouring every book he can find. That's when Martin decides he wants to become a writer.

Whether London intended the symbolism or not, Marcello and Braucci seem to lean into the story suggested by the protagonist's surname. Martin eats freely and hungrily of the fruit of knowledge, and ruin is the result. He gives himself two years, living in a rent-free situation with a woman and her two children, to hone his craft. Stories are mailed to assorted magazines, and the rejected mail keeps being returned.

Martin becomes poorer. He becomes a joke within Elena's circle of friends and family. He forms a friendship with socialist Russ Brissenden (Carlo Cecchi), whose politics Marti rejects but whose support he greatly appreciates, while asserting his position as an individualist—as unprofitable as it is for him.

Things evolve, of course—from ruin to ruin, from exile to exile, from disappointment to disappointment and to despair. The final act gives Martin what he wants, as the country outgrows the political arguments of this time and suddenly finds Martin's increasingly bitter, angry, and nihilistic views to be appetizing ("Destroy the dogs," he argues, so that there can be a next step: "Destroy the poor."). The potential for ruin becomes broader in scope.

Marcello's approach is formally dynamic, using digital cinematography (led by Alessandro Abate and Francesco Di Giacomo) to replicate the look of film stock from the 1970s and seamlessly incorporating archival footage for background/establishing shots and flashbacks. The result is a film that seems of a specific period but a story that belongs to either the 20th century in general or no time at all. We never know what history Italy already has experienced or is about to experience in this timeline, whether they know the eventual consequences of the direction of Martin's philosophy or if the men in black shirts, organizing on a beach in the film's final scene, are merging the story with actual history.

The filmmakers firmly establish this as a political parable. The point of Martin Eden is not to see history as it actually unfolded. It's to serve as a reminder of how quickly and easily our political fate can be put on a seemingly unstoppable course. Such a realization is enough, perhaps, to make someone want to take a long swim—toward somewhere, anywhere but here, or nowhere at all.

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