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.
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.