Young Goethe in Love (2010) User Reviews

Puts you right there

[Karl Self · 8/10 · 18 October 2010]

Goethe! is on a mission to rehumanize the godly "prince of poets" Goethe ("with O-E"), and largely succeeds. The movie picks out the period when young Johann is still trying to appease his dad by taking on a day job as assistant to the district attorney (or the mid-18.th- century equivalent to that job description) of boondocksville Wetzlar, after having faltered his legal studies in the much more mundane Strassburg. In other words, immediately before young John's groundbreaking success of "The Sufferings Of Young Werther". Goethe befriends social drop-out Jerusalem, struggles with his staunch superior Kestner, and eventually falls in love with charming ingénue Charlotte Buff, only to lose her to the better-established Kestner. Around the same time, Jerusalem commits suicide after an unhappy love affair with a married woman. Goethe processes his troublesome experiences by writing his first pageturner.

To my mind this movie succeeds in bringing Goethe closer to the modern reader -- it only fails on one count: utter historical veracity. It's not a documentary, folks. Goethe failed his doctorate, but possibly not through laziness; what exactly Goethe passed his time with in Wetzlar is unclear, but he probably didn't work as a legal clerk; Kestner was therefore not his superior, and Jerusalem didn't shoot himself in front of Goethe. There, I said it.

Personally, I thought two points of the movie were icky: I didn't buy that Charlotte and Goethe would have bumped uglies immediately after their first kiss (and especially not in the middle of the falling rain), and I thought the scene, when a despondent Goethe arrives in Frankfurt only to find out that Charlotte secretly had his novel published and that it turned out to be a smash hit bestseller (yadda yadda yadda), was extremely cheesy.

Where the movie excels is to take us into a time that was, by modern standards, very damp, dark and filthy, but also wildly romantic.

part biopic, part colourful historical drama and part romance

[gregking4 · 7/10 · 17 April 2011]

Playwright, poet and author, Johann Goethe is one of the most famous German writers. This lavish production is part biopic, part colourful historical drama and part romance, but it makes for an entertaining and bawdy romp along the same vein as Tom Jones, Shakespeare In Love, etc. The film mainly concentrates on the youthful Goethe's life before he successfully published his first novel, at the age of 22, which made him the toast of Europe. When we first meet Goethe (Alexander Fehling), he is an aspiring poet. But after several rejections from publishers, who feel that his work is uninspiring, Goethe follows his disapproving father's advice and heads to the small town of Wetzlar, where he gains employment as a law clerk working for the officious Ketsner (Moritz Bleibtreu). He shares a room with a fellow law student, the boisterous and socially uncouth Wilhelm (Volker Bruch). He also falls in love with the beautiful Charlotte (Miriam Stein). But Charlotte's father is struggling financially, and arranges for Charlotte to marry Kestner. Goethe and Kestner become rivals, which eventually leads to Goethe being imprisoned. His misadventures and the doomed romance provides the material for Goethe's first novel The Sorrows Of Young Werther. Fehling (who had a small role in Inglorious Basterds) brings a rakish charm, with, energy and charisma to his performance as the irreverent, hard drinking, 17th century slacker Goethe. Bleibtreu is suitably cold as the rather dull Kestner. Stein is feisty and sassy as Charlotte. Director Phillip Stozl (the grueling mountaineering drama North Face, etc) directs the material with a light touch. He makes great use of locations to enhance the film's atmosphere. The production design is excellent, and the film's setting reek of authenticity.

The sorrows of young Werther

[jotix100 · 7/10 · 19 November 2011]

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, the great German poet and playwright was indeed too young as the story begins. He is a terrible law student in the Frankfurt of the 18th century. Failing to pass the bar exam, he makes a bad impression on the panel that are conducting the oral dissertation. His father, furious with young Johann, decides he must go to another place that will prove not to be as distracting. So young Goethe is dispatched to Wetzlar, an unsophisticated spot, quite a contrast with the city he left behind.

At the law firm where Goethe goes to work, he meets another colleague, Wilhelm, who is a kindred spirit who sees in the new arrival a friend. It is Wilhelm who introduces Johann to the local society. Johann falls hard fro the opinionated Lotte, the oldest daughter of an impoverished man. She is the oldest of seven siblings living outside the city. Johann and Wilhelm decide to pay her a visit in which young Goethe falls deeply in love with the charming young woman.

Unknown to Johann, Lotte's father sees the opportunity when the occasion arises to accept a marriage proposal for his daughter, when Johann's superior at the law firm sets his eyes on Lotte. The fact causes the young man such distress that drives him to write his sufferings into a manuscript he dedicates to his beloved Lotte, the woman he cannot have. Lotte, reading what Johann wrote in his despair decides it is worth publishing the memoirs, something that surprises Johann on his return to Frankfurt where the book is a best seller.

Directed by Philipp Stolzl, the film does not break new ground. It is a glossy account of a period in the life of the young artist whose work is revered as one of the best writers of the German language. The film is light as written for the screen by the director with Christoff Muller and Alexander Dydyna. A young Goethe as depicted in the story was quite a charmer in his dealings with the love he felt for a woman that was not meant to be his. It also conveys the fact that in spite of what his father wanted for him, Johann's mind was better suited for literature than a law career.

Alexander Fehling has the good looks demanded for the role of Goethe. Miriam Stein fares much better with her Lotte, an accomplished portrait of the young woman who must help her family that needed her sacrifice. Moritz Bleibtreu is an accomplished actor seen here as Albert Kestner, the man that won Lotte because of his wealth and social standing rather than by getting her love. Volker Bruch is seen as Wilhelm.

Our only objection we had in watching the film was the poorly colored subtitles in the version that was shown recently at the Landmark Sunshine that made us strain our eyes to follow the translation.

Good-humoured and not too serious

[Charlot47 · 17 September 2012]

Good-humoured and not too serious fiction about the young Goethe, tall and sometimes gawky Alexander Fehling, during his stint at a law court in the modest Hessian town of Wetzlar.

There he falls for the charming, gifted and sexy Lotte Buff (Miriam Stein), but sees her marry for family reasons his rich and influential superior Kestner (Moritz Bleibtreu). He also suffers the loss of his best friend Wilhelm Jerusalem (Volker Bruch), who blows his brains out. Out of these traumas comes a passionate semi-autobiographical novel, "The Sorrows of Young Werther", which overnight makes the still unsure young man a national hero.

What Lotte says of the book, that it is not objectively true "Wahrheit" but creatively poetic "Dichtung", applies also to the film. The consummation of their love in a ruined abbey, ending up entwined naked in the mud, with subsequent colds that confine them to their separate beds, is filmed realistically but remains fantasy. More than a nod to Richardson's "Tom Jones" and, in the portrayal of the immortal artist as a young dog, to Shaffer's "Amadeus".

He was young and needed the money

[kosmasp · 6/10 · 30 December 2010]

Even Goethe was young once (yes I know, some things seem completely ridiculous now don't they) and was not the genius we all came to know ... Wait, do we really know him? Actually I wouldn't claim to know him. So we know his work and may like that or not. Think it's great or not. But what do we know about the human behind that?

Only way to make the movie more awkward would have been, to show him as a 2-year old (though that would be almost intriguing ... and I might even line up to watch that). As it is, we get to see him, as we have not seen him before. So the filmmakers have the freedom to show a human side on him. If any of this is based on anything in particular? I wouldn't be able to tell you.

What I can tell you, is that this is very light entertainment. It also tells us, that even great persons are people too. If you can live with that and enjoy a little story that has no aim to please anything more than lightweight entertainment, than you can't do anything wrong by watching this

A somewhat different period piece

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 9 December 2015]

"Goethe!" is a 100-minute movie from Germany directed by Philipp Stölzl and he also came up with the script with 2 other writers. Moritz Bleibtreu may be the biggest star in the cast, but the lead is played by Alexander Fehling, a breakthrough performance for him. Other than these two, there are more actors in here that are known in Germany, such as Klaußner, Hübchen, Bruch and Milberg. My favorite performance, however, comes from Miriam Stein I think, the only major female character and given she has not played in a film of that dimension before, it was delightful to see how good she was, especially in the emotional parts.

This 5-year-old film can certainly be classified as a period piece and there is the usual story of love vs. reason for Stein's character. Love would be Goethe, reason is Kestner. This film is as wild as Goethe himself and he and his buddy occasionally reminded me of the two hobbits from "Lord of the Rings". It was great fun to watch them. The film becomes more serious as it goes on, but I never felt it was a tragic watch, even with Goethe not getting the girl he wants. Stölzl also solved this with creativity as the film to me somehow had to end on a high note. And he used Goethe's success as a writer for this. So, everybody was somehow happy. Still, it's always difficult to watch for me and see how love was not the crucial factor in relationships back then. Totally unimaginable today.

This was the second time I watched this movie and was at least as good as the first time. Stölzl is slowly moving into Germany's filmmaking elite for me. I did no like "Nordwand", but that had mostly to do with the subject of the film. I loved "The Physician" and now I also like "Goethe!". A pretty talented director and I am certainly curious about his next works. Until then, I recommend "Goethe!". Good performances, a nice story and also real characters (obviously) definitely make this one worth the watch.

Love the topic, not the content

[kates4289 · 6/10 · 10 July 2012]

The premise of this movie is intriguing at best. Set in Eighteenth Century Germany, the costumes and scenery are succulent eye candy for the visual epicureans and history buffs alike. Impressively shot and beautifully acted, this movie has the potential to become a staple in any avid period piece fanatics movie library. Some historical inaccuracies aside, this German drama has the potential to be an impressive foreign film. "Goethe" could have easily become one of my favorite "feel good, need a good cry, want to escape from modern life" movie. Sadly, it will not be. The explicit and repetitive use of profanity and nudity (male and female) is unnecessary and spread throughout the movie. Listed as "Unrated", it should be given an "R" rating. A movie that could have been a real film gem was marred by the unnecessary filth added in. If you are somehow able to watch an edited version of this movie without all the junk thrown in, I would recommend it. Otherwise, it is a waste.

A film about one of my heroes

[pefrss · 9/10 · 14 March 2014]

As a child I was already an avid reader, and nothing fascinated me more than Goethe. I knew many of his poems and some of his plays by heart and up to today, I find comfort in rereading his work and nearly three hundred years later everything he wrote has still relevance. Since many years I have three heroes and all three of them have a name starting with G: Goethe, Gandhi and Gaudi. so I never miss a book or a movie telling their stories, but sometimes I miss the movies in the theater, as they are not main stream. That was the case with the Goethe movie and I happened to find it in my local library. My first reaction to the movie was not so positive. I felt like these film makers were turning the German geniuses into some kind of crazy persons, I especially felt that way with Amadeus and also Beethoven.. And the first scenes of this movie worried me that they were trying to do the same thing to Goethe. There is this entry monologue in Faust when he talks about having studied so much and learned nothing." Ah! Now I've done Philosophy, I've finished Law and Medicine, And sadly even Theology: Taken fierce pains, from end to end. Now here I am, a fool for sure! No wiser than I was before:"

I always saw Goethe as Faust, a well=educated but disillusioned man seeking for the meaning of life, not a desperate love-sick youngster.. But when the movie continued I started to like it . Eighteenth century Germany is captured quite convincingly, the costumes, the sets and the landscape are beautiful and the acting persuasive. It transported me into a fantasy trying to imagine how Goethe lived as a young man. I had visited his house in Weimar after the wall fell and some of the places in Italy he favored, which helped me to understand him better.. I deeply resent the English translation of the movie title, this movie has nothing in common with Shakespeare in love and is much more realistic. I will certainly buy the DVD to add to my collection of favorite movies.

Nicely done

[iljavenissov · 8/10 · 18 September 2021]

It's well made but you can see it's made for a contemporary viewer and thus lacks the kind of historical reality atmoshphere you find in some productions. But still worth a watch.

correct

[Kirpianuscus · 7 April 2024]

I like it !

After the final credits, it was a kind of diagnosis because I do not know what to expect from this film, proposing a young Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

I liked for humor and acting, Alexander Fehling proposing not only for physical resemblance, a credible young hero, the story being easy, nice and seductive and the humor just working in fair manner.

But the essential contribution seems the work of. Moritz Bleibtreu who proposes right tones for his character, not ignoring honest job of. Henri Hubchen.

Difficult to say too much , except correct and be just grateful for the use of Sufferances of Werther , one of books of my childhood . So, correct portrait, a generous slice of romance and fun and the charming end.

Incredible biographical

[martinpersson97 · 10/10 · 24 September 2023]

This stellar biopic, if you may use the word, about Goethe is without a doubt one of the better in the genre, and a stellar, masterful auteristic drama at that.

The actors are incredible, all of them stellar and great icons, and all doing such an incredible job. Very beautiful, and of course accompined by a stellar and unique script.

The cinematography, cutting and editing is great. Very unique and characteristic, and it is all around incredibly beautifully put together.

Overall, truly an incredible drama, that is by all means highly recommended for any lover of film, and fans of litterature and poetry!