更新时间:2020-03-19

誒達 • 马丁·伊登:More than the surface

（为了练习英文写的，语言很差请轻喷，继续练习中。）

In the seemingly music-clip and somehow documentary scenes, the soul of Martin travels, from his childhood times to the adult world full of eye-rolls and turbulence, from an unconscious sailor to a reader of the ongoing social chaos, from a Mr. Nobody to Martin Eden the great writer, from an enthusiastic adorer of Elena to a twisted man tortured by maniac psychological disorder. In the end, like the boat which sank into the sea, he drowned himself to the seawater-the signifier of his origin, unraveling the burst of the dream-chasing bubble.

Martin is a young sailor derived from a humble origin. In an accident, he saved the younger brother of the beautiful Elena from a beating. The scion girl of the bourgeois family became the affection of Martin's as the new land of a noble life unveils. Elena was then everything Martin was after, her wordings, her choice of books, her tastes, etc. Endeavoring his efforts to read as many books as possible and to behave himself, Martin aspires to become a writer and maybe to parallel with the upper class one day. During the struggling phase before Martin's career success, Elena became less trusted on Martin. Underneath the couple's conflicts were the contrary pursuits of both parties, which radically contributes to the separation of the couple rather than the obvious class differences. Martin went to devastation, after all, marking a deadly beautiful period to the story.

The Martin Eden movie is far more than merely a simple romantic love story, it also reveals what went on-the socialist movement-with plotted scenes and well-brought flashbacks. The viewer's eye is satisfied with the cold toned color set throughout the movie and the pleasing photographic effects. Some irrelevant yet relevant mise-en-scènes like homemade tapes are edited within the entire film to balance the brutality in life and the peace of Martin's mind. There are segmented sections like in a documentary that explore the silly and happy, or sometimes confusing moments of Martin's past days. He was a sensitive child back then and that's probably why he had to unstoppably communicate with the mad crowd with a pen.

Two lines, one the love story is rivaled by the other line, the self-awareness as individuality of a society, tangle with each other and make the viewer absorbed into the perspectives of the protagonist. Martin could never marry Elena even though he wholeheartedly loves her, the wake of his mindfulness and consciousness would still lead them away. Martin is not a "dog" of Elena's any longer as the last meeting of theirs exposes their stances, which also makes Martin despaired and collapsed. He saw the old and pure him walking through the growing path of the established Martin, waving to where he began; determinedly, Martin Eden chose to commit suicide for the good.

All in all, Martin Eden deserves a good watch in several ways, for its vintage cinematography techniques that remember the Italian music clips, for the exploration of self-awareness as part of the society, and for depicting a melancholy and doomed romance.