The Young Karl Marx

Filmmaker Raoul Peck’s handsomely mounted bio-pic of the founder of Communism (more like a dual biography of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) might remind some of Warren Beatty’s 1981 epic Reds—if Beatty’s film had dwelt at length on committee meetings of guys debating the philosophy of Hegel. In the 1840s, against a background of harsh industrial exploitation, young Marx (August Diehl) is blissfully married to wife Jenny (Vicky Krieps), who has forsaken an aristocratic family for life with the impoverished revolutionary. Engels (Stefan Konarske) remains a factotum for his hated factory-owner father, even as he and Marx work on pamphlets, letters, rallies, and what will become The Communist Manifesto. And there are meetings, all over Europe. Mild doubts about Marxism’s drawbacks, such as inflexible political dogma and personality cults, are voiced by secondary characters. Peck’s sympathies are obvious—a closing montage references future depressions and Wall Street crashes up to the present—but this is an uneven bio-pic. A strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)