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Overview | Synopsis | Gay Interest | Personal review | Quotes | Pictures | Buy |
| Title | Total eclipse | Year | 1995 | |||||||||
| Director | Agnieszka Holland | Writer | Christopher Hampton | |||||||||
| Country | USA | Language | English | |||||||||
| Cast | Leonardo DiCaprio, David Thewlis, Romane Bohringer, Dominique Blanc, Felicie Pasotti Cabarbaye, Nita Klein, James Thiérrée, Denise Chalem, Andrzej Seweryn, Christopher Thompson, Bruce Van Barthold, Christopher Chaplin, Christopher Hampton, Mathias Jung, Kettly Noel, Cheb Han | |||||||||||
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Official website |
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From director Agnieszka Holland (EUROPA, EUROPA) and writer Christopher Hampton (DANGEROUS LIAISONS, CARRINGTON) comes TOTAL ECLIPSE, the true, fact-based story of the great 19th century French poets, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.
David Thewlis, winner of both the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and New York Film Critics Circle Award for his astounding performance in Mike Leigh's NAKED, stars as Verlaine, a volatile alcoholic torn between his lovely yet conventional wife and the seductive, dangerous and brilliant Rimbaud.
Oscar nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, the talented star of WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE and THE BASKETBALL DIARIES, stars as the wild, young Rimbaud, a poet whose life and work was fueled by an insatiable hunger for intense experience, unbounded by rules or consequences. Rimbaud's was a revolutionary vision that has inspired rebel artists ever since, from Jack Kerouac to Jim Morrison.
Romane Bohringer, the Cesar winning star of SAVAGE NIGHTS, THE ACCOMPANIST and MINA TANNENBAUM, stars as Verlaine's loving wife Mathilde, who finds her husband magnetized by the intoxicating lure of Rimbaud.
Audacious, demanding and provocative, TOTAL ECLIPSE is the story of a volatile romantic triangle and the lives it consumes. Like AMADEUS, it illustrates the easy cruelty of young genius and the constantly warring creative and destructive forces that exist within the artist.
Ultimately, as described by director Agnieszka Holland, TOTAL ECLIPSE is "a story about love. Verlaine loves Rimbaud because he finds him totally, powerfully exceptional. Rimbaud loves Verlaine because for a moment he thinks he has found the companion to share his search of the absolute."
Although the film is set in the 1870's, it is profoundly contemporary, partly because of the diverse personalities of the cast and its universal depiction of romantic and creative obsession. Says Holland, "Poets then were not the insignificant civil servants of literature that they are today. They reinvented their existence moment by moment, using their creativity. Verlaine and Rimbaud were in fact very different but both thought they could find everything, try everything, with no limits or boundaries."
Screenwriter Christopher Hampton, a Rimbaud scholar at Oxford who adapted TOTAL ECLIPSE from one of his earliest plays, found the story to be a "means of posing a number of questions around a central puzzle, namely, what does it mean to be a writer? What could one reasonably hope to achieve? What were the pleasures and torments and what, if any, the responsibilities? Might one change the world, or would it prove beyond one's abilities even to change oneself?"
For both David Thewlis and Leonardo DiCaprio, the film was a risky, daring choice. Comments DiCaprio, "The role of Rimbaud is one of the most important of my career and one of the best roles to play for a young actor. Rimbaud wanted to change the world from one day to the next. He was someone courageous, who didn't worry about the consequences of his actions. I live my life thinking of the consequences. Shooting this film, I learned not to worry about what the others thought of what I was doing. It wasn't easy, but it changed me."
David Thewlis, who shot to prominence playing another difficult, troubled soul -- Johnny in Mike Leigh's controversial NAKED -- does not see Verlaine as a sympathetic character. Says Thewlis, "He was brutal and possessive. I've learned in the long run that it isn't necessary to love the characters I play. However, I feel great compassion for Verlaine. He's a weak man, prone to violence and alcohol. His real drama lies in the clear separation between the life he leads and the life he'd like to lead."
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It is the story of two gay poets in love with each other in the early 1870's. |
A good movie with a good script and some lovely scenes and especially of interest is the one where Leonardo is standing full frontal naked on the roof.
And of course it is very pleasant to see DiCaprio in a gay relationship.
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Verlaine: What do you think of my wife?
Rimbaud: You're last book
Rimbaud:The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.
Rimbaud: I understood that what I needed to become the first poet of this century is to experience everything in my body. It's no longer enough for me to be one person, I decided to be everyone. I decided to be a genious. I decided to originate the future.
Verlaine: What is your greatest fear?
Rimbaud: You're here living like this because you have to. Drunk and sex and the kind of complaisant melonchonly and enough money to soak your self oblivious every night. But me, I'm here because I chose to be.
Rimbaud: I have no intention of taking a job. My work is going far too well -- I can't afford to waste time earning money.
Verlaine: I love her body.
Rimbaud: Don't expect me to be faithful to you
Verlaine: I did some shopping this morning. I bought a gun.
Verlaine: I didn't mean to I'm sorry.
Rimbaud: Do you love me?
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