I loved this and couldn't really ask for much more, which is why 10 stars, though I'll admit to a flaw further down. But in stark contrast to most of what's coming out on the art-house circuit, it's able to do it all - look good, hang together, matter and intellectually stimulate - and it does all four with amazing aplomb.
Feels, really, like some great work I'd somehow missed from the sixties, though it's better even than some of those classics: beautifully shot, formally inventive, veering Brechtianly from realism to transparent artifice and taking on big political and philosophical questions with smarts and wit. In several passages from the protagonist's writings, it even manages the trick of using literary language well in film and makes it look easy, which it isn't.
I guess I'm sort of saying it feels like sixties Godard, except that it allows itself a lyrical, even classical beauty Godard would have routinely rejected. It's more like Bertolucci after he sloughed off Godard's influence, maybe, or Visconti.
But the Godardian trace remains in that the poetry of the imagery is mockingly undercut both by the artifice, especially the found historical footage used for scene setting, and by the protagonist's various incarnations. Initially an uneducated ship's crewman landed among the wealthy, he does the standard job of fictional characters in such situations, bringing a little earth and humour to the brittle Brahmins. Then, self-educated at a superhuman rate, he becomes the flawed and misdirected avatar of the film's epic note, aggressively propounding neo-Darwinian radical individualism, Nietzschian 'blond beasts' and all, alienating the rich liberals who had taken him in. Finally, in his sort of third age, having flicked off the fascism this might have seemed to be leading to like a fly, he returns to earth and is effectively buried by it, sickened by everything and, in particular it seems, by the gruesome logic used to maintain class inequality.
Standard line seems to be that the third section drags or is otherwise weak. Seems fair. I think it's that the narrative thread gets lost. The first two parts are about Eden discovering culture and then struggling to achieve success in it and be able to marry his sweetheart. It's engrossing and carries us along. The third section jumps ahead to his world-weary later years and loses the cause-and-effect connective tissue: we never really get to see how the disillusionment sets in or why.
So, yeah, that's the flaw, but personally I don't care; there's still tons to enjoy in the third section and the whole is still a masterpiece standing head, shoulders, knees and toes above the usual rubbish. It also really makes me want to read the Jack London original and even Herbert Spencer, problematic though his writings are shown to be here.
Feels, really, like some great work I'd somehow missed from the sixties, though it's better even than some of those classics: beautifully shot, formally inventive, veering Brechtianly from realism to transparent artifice and taking on big political and philosophical questions with smarts and wit. In several passages from the protagonist's writings, it even manages the trick of using literary language well in film and makes it look easy, which it isn't.
I guess I'm sort of saying it feels like sixties Godard, except that it allows itself a lyrical, even classical beauty Godard would have routinely rejected. It's more like Bertolucci after he sloughed off Godard's influence, maybe, or Visconti.
But the Godardian trace remains in that the poetry of the imagery is mockingly undercut both by the artifice, especially the found historical footage used for scene setting, and by the protagonist's various incarnations. Initially an uneducated ship's crewman landed among the wealthy, he does the standard job of fictional characters in such situations, bringing a little earth and humour to the brittle Brahmins. Then, self-educated at a superhuman rate, he becomes the flawed and misdirected avatar of the film's epic note, aggressively propounding neo-Darwinian radical individualism, Nietzschian 'blond beasts' and all, alienating the rich liberals who had taken him in. Finally, in his sort of third age, having flicked off the fascism this might have seemed to be leading to like a fly, he returns to earth and is effectively buried by it, sickened by everything and, in particular it seems, by the gruesome logic used to maintain class inequality.
Standard line seems to be that the third section drags or is otherwise weak. Seems fair. I think it's that the narrative thread gets lost. The first two parts are about Eden discovering culture and then struggling to achieve success in it and be able to marry his sweetheart. It's engrossing and carries us along. The third section jumps ahead to his world-weary later years and loses the cause-and-effect connective tissue: we never really get to see how the disillusionment sets in or why.
So, yeah, that's the flaw, but personally I don't care; there's still tons to enjoy in the third section and the whole is still a masterpiece standing head, shoulders, knees and toes above the usual rubbish. It also really makes me want to read the Jack London original and even Herbert Spencer, problematic though his writings are shown to be here.