An Italian-French adaptation of Jack London’s semi-autobiographical, 1909 novel of the same title, Martin Eden is an engrossing story of a working-class sailor, a young man who has lived by his wits all his life. Determined to climb out of ignorance and poverty through intellectual self-improvement, Martin (a brilliant Luca Marinelli) finds his inspiration when he is befriended by the wealthy, cultured Orsini family. It doesn’t hurt that one of the Orsinis is a deceptively dewy-eyed, surprisingly steely gamine, Elena (Jessica Cressy), who shares a mutual if unspoken attraction with the rough-edged Martin. Elena gives Martin the books he craves and encourages him to return to primary school, despite his age.
But between his bottomless hunger for the ideas and narratives found in books, and his desire to become a successful writer, Martin’s mind and ambition grow rapidly, until he begins to see the limitations of the social classes he straddles: laborers on one side and the educated, wealthy elite on the other. With the passage of years and publication of his own books extolling individualism while attacking both socialism and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, Martin becomes a pariah to many.
But (and this is the most interesting element of the film) he also earns a reputation as an entertaining iconoclast for those amused, but not persuaded, by Christopher Hitchens types. It’s only the people who surround and guard and try to love Martin behind the scenes who see what a monster he can be, albeit one who invites sympathy.
Filmmaker Pietro Marcello makes a handsome, haunted, ennobling, tragic mosaic of a life that burns too bright and too alone in a vast sky. Marcello could have treated all this episodically, but a big part of the film’s melancholy power is the sweep of time in one great, if not necessarily good, man’s life. Strongly recommended.