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Total Eclipse is a 1995 film directed by Agnieszka Holland, based on a 1967 play by Christopher Hampton, who also wrote the screenplay. It presents a historically accurate account, based on their letters and poems, of the passionate and violent homosexual relationship between the two 19th century French poets, Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis) and Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio), at a time, for both of them, of soaring creativity. It is rated R in the USA for strong sexuality and nudity, language, and some startling violence.
Plot summarySpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The teen-aged Rimbaud had sent his poetry to Verlaine from his home in the provinces. Verlaine, instantly fascinated by it, impulsively invites him to his rich father-in-law's home in Paris, where he lives with his young, pregnant wife. The wild, eccentric Rimbaud displays no sense of manners or decency whatever, scandalising Verlaine's pretentious, bourgeois in-laws. Verlaine is totally seduced by the 16-year-old Rimbaud's physical body as well as by the unique originality of his creative mind. The staid respectability of married, heterosexual life and easy, middle class surroundings had been stifling Verlaine's admittedly sybaritic literary talent. His taking up with Rimbaud is as much a rebellion and a liberation as it is a giving in to self-indulgence and masochism. Rimbaud acts as sadistically to Verlaine as does Verlaine to his young wife, whom he eventually deserts. A violent, drunken, drugged, itinerant relationship ensues between the two great poets, the sad climax of which arrives in Brussels when an enraged and practically insane Verlaine shoots and wounds Rimbaud and is sentenced to prison for sodomy and attempted murder.
The film does not end there. Bitterly renouncing literature in any form, Rimbaud goes off on his own to travel the world, finally settling in Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) to run a "trading post" that the film neglects to mention involved gun-running and possibly slave-trading. There he has an African mistress and possibly a young African boy-lover. A tumor in his right knee forces him to have himself taken back to France where his leg is amputated. Nevertheless the cancer spreads and he dies. (At Marseille, on November 10, 1891, aged 37.) The film then returns to the café (ignoring what Verlaine had been doing with his life 1873-1896.) Rimbaud's sister asserts that her brother had accepted confession from a priest right before he died and shown Christian penitence and thus would want only a censored version of his writings to survive. Verlaine (who is also dying from a tumor on the right knee) pretends to agree but tears up her card after she leaves. His precious cache of Rimbaud manuscripts, faithfully and devotedly published , will constitute the basis for Arthur Rimbaud's formidable reputation as one of the greatest of Symbolist poets. The film ends quite beautifully as Verlaine, drinking absinthe to which he has become addicted, sees a vision of Rimbaud, returned from some transcendent realm to express the love and respect Verlaine has thus posthumously earned. CriticismDirector Holland has built a reputation of making films that are considered really good or bad. In this case, most American critics felt that the latter was the case. The most common criticism was that the film never explained the importance of these two great poets' work, especially their role in the development of the Symbolist movement. Also, critics said the film had little character development aside from showing the two famous French poets at a critical and radically unhappy moment in their lives. When two celestial bodies are aligned, one of them hides the sun from the other, producing total darkness. This destructive darkness certainly occurred with the meeting of Rimbaud and Verlaine. Critics felt that the film showed a limited sense of what life was like in late-nineteenth century Europe. It largely, but not totally, ignores the two poets' history before and after they met, which makes it harder for the uneducated viewer to understand why a film about their lives was made. It might be very difficult for someone who is not familiar with late nineteenth century French literature to understand or appreciate what is happening in the film. Critics did generally feel that the acting, musical score and cinematography were all well done, although some felt that DiCaprio played the character too closely to his role in the film The Basketball Diaries. Gay film critics noted that the film allowed the two poets to come out of the closet, and made a point of dealing with gay and straight love scenes even-handedly. Trivia
Cast
DVDIn 1999, a DVD edition of the film was released. It does not have any of the special features that people have come to expect from a DVD such as deleted scenes, cast or director audio commentaries. However, it did feature both a widescreen and fullscreen version of the movie on the same disc.
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