This film shocked me a lot at the time.
One is Leonardo's acting. A friend who later studied Rimbaud's biography said that Leonardo's performance was exaggerated, and the director was not faithful to the facts. But anyway, I've never seen Leonardo in such a good movie. I think this is his best film. He understands what Rimbaud's temperament is, and he also knows what kind of eyes Rimbaud uses to see the world. Perhaps he did not restore a real Rimbaud (in fact, no one can). He knew what Rimbaud should look like in the movie. He played a Rimbaud one would like to see. Even Leonardo in the movie is even more Rimbaud than Rimbaud. But after watching Leonardo's bad movies, you know that his brilliance only stayed so dazzling for a short while.
The second is the stories of these people. Rimbaud and Verlaine. Not only same-sex love, but also one's admiration and respect for another's talent, and a desire to get close to that talent. Those dialogues are very classic. It's just that Rimbaud is too weird for this world. Talent can also be divided into eccentric talent. Old goods like Maugham are very good, but Rimbaud can only go to Africa.
The third is director Holland. Remember she was a student of Milos Foreman. There is great storytelling and great control. But out of these films of hers that I have seen, Total Eclipse is the best one.
Maybe people are drawn to this film by different factors - stars, fans, whatever. I watched the film so many times at the time and never watched it again. Now that I think about it, this is still a movie I still like very much today. There are things that are too genius and profound human nature. Those are things that cannot be explained clearly, are arbitrarily spoiled by theory, and cannot be obtained often. A suitable director, a suitable subject matter, and a few suitable actors met at that time to produce this film. None of these people have done more than this film, in fact, perhaps at the time, they created something they couldn't handle.
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