Martin Eden
Pietro Marcello’s ambitious adaptation of Jack London’s 1909 semi-autobiographical bildungsroman transports viewers to Naples, Italy and tells a timeless tale of class struggle as given by a proletariat. The central character, Martin Eden, played by Luca Marinelli, is first introduced to us as a young sailor who has been working at sea since the age of eleven. One fateful morning, he comes to the aid of young Arturo, who’s been beaten on the docks and, as a way to express his gratitude, invites Martin over to his family’s alluring mansion. Upon setting foot inside the estate, Martin frets over his well-worn clothes, wondering whether or not Arturo’s wealthy family would welcome him, to which Arturo assures him with: “don’t worry, my parents are open-minded”.
Inside the family home, Martin meets Arturo’s younger sister, Elena Orsini (Jessica Cressy), and instantly becomes smitten with her when she gently corrects his grammar and talks him through the French poet, Baudelaire. Unable to keep up with Elena’s sageness, Martin doesn’t give up. His adoration for Elena and his desire to be worthy of her and her class prompt him to educate himself and develop his craft as a writer. Martin, similar to any other aspiring writer, starts out by dwelling on the idea of true love and beauty. Meanwhile, Elena, who’s a member of the well-cultured, is the kind of woman who measures the standards of love on the scale of wealth, status and education – Martin possesses none of those things. As he tries to shift away from his own class, his desire to remain faithful to himself as a writer further alienates him from the upper class he wishes to enter.
Although being structured as a class-based romance, Martin Eden is largely built within the confines of its political idealism. Martin Eden’s politics are contradictory and, at times, confusing, with themes of individualism and socialism being brought to the fore. Nevertheless, they are presented purposefully in an ambivalent manner because the protagonist is politically ambiguous. Martin believes in individualism but finds himself rooted in the socialist movement due to his background. The tragedy of Martin Eden lies in his individual effort to make himself stand out through personal development; however, this only makes him stand alone, detached from the new world he does not conform to, as well as the class he originally came from.
More than just a love letter to Italian cinema, Martin Eden feels like a product that comes straight out of a celluloid daydream, one that is laden with poetic devices and seared with passion. Being shot on grainy 16mm film to foreground the anachronistic setting, the film makes use of colour-graded archival images as a way of representing the flux of Italian history within the bounds of the main character’s viewpoint. In effect, it gives us a glimpse into Martin’s past while simultaneously highlights his cultural and intellectual growth throughout the years. By transferring London’s story to Italy, Pietro Marcello is able to give the all-American tale an imaginative spin with a fresh continental perspective and further underscore the universal themes of social mobility and politics. Aside from all the technical feats, what really holds the film together is the larger-than-life Luca Marinelli who is incredibly expressive, not to say intimidating, both in terms of his physical and emotional performance.
Martin Eden might just be one of the great discoveries of 2020. It’s a film full of life as in that it’s both beautiful and ugly, hopeful, yet downright pessimistic; a work of art that revels in its inherent contradictions and to put it bluntly, like Luca Marinelly himself, it’s scorchingly handsome.