# The Young Karl Marx
**The Young Karl Marx** (German: *Der junge Karl Marx*) is a 2017 biographical drama film directed by Raoul Peck that follows [Karl Marx](https://www.edgepedia.org/karl-marx) and [Friedrich Engels](https://www.edgepedia.org/friedrich-engels) from Marx's 1843 exile from Prussia to the writing of the *Communist Manifesto* in 1848. It is a co-production of Germany, France, and Belgium, premiered at the 67th Berlinale in 2017, and runs 118 minutes.[1](https://rowpictures.de/en/film/der-junge-karl-marx) • [2](https://www.artemisproductions.com/fr/films/Le_jeune_Karl_Marx)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writers | Raoul Peck, co-writing with Pascal Bonitzer[2](https://www.artemisproductions.com/fr/films/Le_jeune_Karl_Marx) |
| Production | Germany, France, and Belgium, 2017; 118 minutes; produced by Velvet Film, Agat Films & Cie, and Artémis Productions, among others[1](https://rowpictures.de/en/film/der-junge-karl-marx) • [2](https://www.artemisproductions.com/fr/films/Le_jeune_Karl_Marx) |
| Principal cast | August Diehl (Karl Marx), Stefan Konarske (Friedrich Engels), Vicky Krieps (Jenny von Westphalen), Hannah Steele (Mary Burns), Olivier Gourmet (Pierre Proudhon)[3](https://www.artemisproductions.com/sites/artemisproductions.com/files/html2pdf/fiche_film/pdf/fiche_film-THE_YOUNG_KARL_MARX-en.pdf) |
| Premiere | World premiere at the 67th Berlinale, 2017[1](https://rowpictures.de/en/film/der-junge-karl-marx) |
| US release | February 23, 2018, limited, distributed by The Orchard; US gross $125.4K[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx) |
| Reception | 63% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 51 reviews; Metascore 62 from 14 critic reviews[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx) • [5](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-young-karl-marx/) |
| German rating | Awarded the *Prädikat besonders wertvoll* (especially valuable) by the Deutsche Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung[6](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/der_junge_karl_marx) |
## Spoilers
### Story and historical setting
The film opens in 1843, when the young journalist Marx, then in his mid-twenties, gets into trouble with the German police for defending the rights of peasants to scavenge dead wood from a landowner's forest, and is exiled from Prussia.[7](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-young-karl-marx) • [8](https://www.csmonitor.com/Arts-Culture/Movies/2018/0223/The-Young-Karl-Marx-chronicles-the-early-life-of-the-philosopher) He travels with his wife Jenny to Paris, where in August 1844 he meets Friedrich Engels, the rebellious son of a wealthy textile factory owner who has investigated the conditions of the English working class.[9](https://jfi.org/programs/jfi-film-archive/the-young-karl-marx) • [1](https://rowpictures.de/en/film/der-junge-karl-marx) The action then moves to Brussels, where the French government exiles Marx for his political agitation, and finally to London, where the two plot to take over a secret international society of workers.[10](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-young-karl-marx)
The narrative culminates with the drafting of the *Communist Manifesto*, which the film shows being revised by candlelight by the exhausted, then virtually unknown trio of Marx, Engels, and Jenny.[9](https://jfi.org/programs/jfi-film-archive/the-young-karl-marx) Along the way Marx debates the leading radical thinkers of his day, including the French anarchist [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon](https://www.edgepedia.org/pierre-joseph-proudhon), whose pronouncement "Property is theft" Marx answers with the question "Whose property?", and the German revolutionary Wilhelm Weitling.[11](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-young-karl-marx-2018) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-young-karl-marx)
**Characters and performances.** August Diehl plays Marx as fiery, brilliant, disorganized, and passionate, while Stefan Konarske's Engels is more organized and, despite his courage and curiosity, somewhat of a wide-eyed innocent.[11](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-young-karl-marx-2018) [Vicky Krieps](https://www.edgepedia.org/vicky-krieps) portrays Jenny Marx as an intellectually equal partner, a reading the German evaluation board singled out as central to the film's portrait.[6](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/der_junge_karl_marx) Engels's romance with Mary Burns, an Irish factory worker, is woven into his study of English laborers.[10](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-young-karl-marx)
### The ending: Production and style
**The ending.** The film closes with a montage set to [Bob Dylan](https://www.edgepedia.org/bob-dylan)'s "Like a Rolling Stone," cutting together images of social struggles and socialist developments around the world from the 1848 revolutions to the present, a device the German evaluation jury called an effective way of throwing the viewer out of the historical-film perspective and asserting the continued relevance of Marx's and Engels's ideas.[13](https://www.hotpress.com/culture/ifilm-reviewi-the-young-karl-marx-22166306) • [6](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/der_junge_karl_marx)
## Production and style
Raoul Peck, a Haitian director and political activist, made the film as what one festival profile calls a ten-year labor of love, following his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary *[I Am Not Your Negro](https://www.edgepedia.org/i-am-not-your-negro)* (2016).[9](https://jfi.org/programs/jfi-film-archive/the-young-karl-marx) The screenplay is credited to Peck with Pascal Bonitzer, the frequent collaborator of Jacques Rivette.[11](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-young-karl-marx-2018) Kolja Brandt's cinematography was praised for making a modest production budget look lavish.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx) The score is by Alexei Aigui.[2](https://www.artemisproductions.com/fr/films/Le_jeune_Karl_Marx)
The film is multilingual: the Austin Film Society lists it as being in German with English subtitles, while Rotten Tomatoes records the original language as French.[12](https://www.austinfilm.org/films/the-young-karl-marx/) • [4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx)
## Reception
Critical response was mixed to favorable. The film holds a 63% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metascore of 62 on Metacritic, in the "generally favorable" band.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx) • [5](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-young-karl-marx/) A.O. Scott of *The New York Times* praised its clarity in showing how personal experience flows within the wider stream of history, and Peter Bradshaw of *The Guardian* credited the intelligence of the acting and the stamina of the writing and directing.[5](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-young-karl-marx/) • [14](https://www.movienco.co.uk/films/the-young-karl-marx/reviews/) Critics who dissented found the film conventional: the *Christian Science Monitor* called it a conventional biopic with little political or psychological depth, and Owen Gleiberman of *Variety* wrote that it commits the genteel sin of the old biopics, turning its hero into a plaster saint.[5](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-young-karl-marx/) • [14](https://www.movienco.co.uk/films/the-young-karl-marx/reviews/) [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-hollywood-reporter)'s verdict, "at once historically impeccable and a filmic disappointment," was widely quoted.[5](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-young-karl-marx/)
In Germany, where the film opened on March 2, 2017 under the title *Der junge Karl Marx*, it received the *Prädikat besonders wertvoll*, and the jury noted that the film shows how Marx and Engels developed their early work into the *Communist Manifesto* in the four years before 1848, against censorship, police repression, and poverty.[6](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/der_junge_karl_marx) The film grossed $125.4K in its limited US theatrical release.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx)
## The "Young Marx" in scholarship
The film's title points to a long scholarly controversy over Marx's early writings. Marcello Musto, a scholar of Marx's reception history, argued in a 2015 study that the *Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844* were wrongly treated by almost all interpreters as a finished work: textual analysis alongside the so-called Paris notebooks refutes both the view that the manuscripts prefigure Marx's thought as a whole, held by Siegfried Landshut and the French existentialists, and the view, advanced by Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and [Louis Althusser](https://www.edgepedia.org/louis-althusser), that they present a well-defined theory opposed to Marx's "scientific" maturity.[15](https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/64d3ad3b-5fe7-4c88-892f-9f1b8da5fc62)
The young Marx has also been the subject of dedicated political philosophy. David Leopold's book *The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing* ([Cambridge University Press](https://www.edgepedia.org/cambridge-university-press)) examines the political thought of the young Marx, his critical engagement with Hegel's political philosophy, and the 1840s, a formative period in which Marx lived in Germany, France, and Belgium before settling into permanent exile in England in August 1849.[16](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/74779/excerpt/9780521874779_excerpt.pdf) The film's compressed five-year span, from the dead-wood articles of 1843 to the *Manifesto* of 1848, corresponds to this same formative decade.[7](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-young-karl-marx)
## References
1. [The Young Karl Marx, ROW Pictures](https://rowpictures.de/en/film/der-junge-karl-marx)
2. [Le jeune Karl Marx, Artémis Productions](https://www.artemisproductions.com/fr/films/Le_jeune_Karl_Marx)
3. [The Young Karl Marx film sheet (PDF), Artémis Productions](https://www.artemisproductions.com/sites/artemisproductions.com/files/html2pdf/fiche_film/pdf/fiche_film-THE_YOUNG_KARL_MARX-en.pdf)
4. [The Young Karl Marx, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_young_karl_marx)
5. [The Young Karl Marx Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-young-karl-marx/)
6. [Der junge Karl Marx, Deutsche Filmbewertung und Medienbewertung (FBW)](https://www.fbw-filmbewertung.com/film/der_junge_karl_marx)
7. [The Young Karl Marx review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-young-karl-marx)
8. [The Young Karl Marx chronicles the early life of the philosopher, The Christian Science Monitor](https://www.csmonitor.com/Arts-Culture/Movies/2018/0223/The-Young-Karl-Marx-chronicles-the-early-life-of-the-philosopher)
9. [The Young Karl Marx, Jewish Film Institute](https://jfi.org/programs/jfi-film-archive/the-young-karl-marx)
10. [The Young Karl Marx, The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/the-young-karl-marx)
11. [The Young Karl Marx movie review, RogerEbert.com](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-young-karl-marx-2018)
12. [The Young Karl Marx, Austin Film Society](https://www.austinfilm.org/films/the-young-karl-marx/)
13. [Film review: The Young Karl Marx, Hot Press](https://www.hotpress.com/culture/ifilm-reviewi-the-young-karl-marx-22166306)
14. [The Young Karl Marx reviews, Movie'n'co](https://www.movienco.co.uk/films/the-young-karl-marx/reviews/)
15. [Marcello Musto (2015), The 'Young Marx' Myth in Interpretations of the Economic–Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Critique 43:2](https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/items/64d3ad3b-5fe7-4c88-892f-9f1b8da5fc62)
16. [David Leopold, The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing, Cambridge University Press](https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/74779/excerpt/9780521874779_excerpt.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › National and regional cinemas by year › Thematic and subject film lists › Lists of films about social, political, and historical subjects*
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