Martin Eden
Agonizingly beautiful adaptation of Jack London’s novel in which the eponymous Martin struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances to claim a place among the literary elite.
The setting is transposed to Italy where Martin (Luca Marinelli), an ill-educated labourer, saves a young man from being beaten up, and is invited to the boy’s family’s estate, where Martin meets his lovely sister, Elena (Jessica Cressy). Overwhelmed by the art and books in the house, as well as his love for Elena, he embarks on a journey of self-education to escape his roots.
The film is a romance, of sorts, yet it also wields an anti-romantic ferocity, suggesting that the fissure between rich and poor is, whatever we yearn to think, unbridgeable.’ The New Yorker.