Young Goethe In Love Dir. Philipp Stölzl

[Music Box Films; 2011]

Styles: romantic comedy, historical drama
Others: Shakespeare In Love, The Other Boleyn Girl, Amadeus

Philipp Stölzl’s Young Goethe In Love, the light romance loosely based on the early life of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is as frolicsome as a puppy. It dashes around with enthusiasm, shrugging off any clumsy missteps along the way. Ardent fans of the writer, or those expecting a biopic, will be disappointed: it’s a romantic comedy in historical clothing. That said, Stölzl has elevated the game with a committed cast and far more panache than the genre typically offers. The lead role is played by Alexander Fehling, best known in these parts as Sergeant Wilhelm, the unlucky new father caught in the basement shootout in Inglourious Basterds. Stölzl’s previous credits include music videos for the industrial metal band Rammstein. It’s safe to say neither bring those experiences to bear in Goethe, a pastoral take on the artist as a young man.

Stölzl’s movie traces the origin myth of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, the bildungsroman that made the writer famous. Inspired by his doomed romance with Charlotte Buff (cheekily played here by Miriam Stein), Goethe’s novel ends with the gloomy Werther committing suicide. The book became a European sensation, even causing a rash of emulatory suicides (Freitod in German, which interestingly translates as “free death”). The novel became a hallmark of the German Romantic movement and, along with Faust, one of Goethe’s canonical works. Stölzl’s version puts Goethe through conventional paces — early creative failures, a displeased father (or Herr Papa, as Fehling calls him), banishment to a legal career in a backwater town — exposition that we zip through during opening credits. The heart of the the story is Goethe’s coming-of-age in small-town Wetzlar, where he befriends a shy, morose student and, of course, meets and falls in love with the spirited “Lotte.” The cuteness of their courtship is a bit trying: she sasses him, he pursues her; they bake bread, recite poetry, and consummate their love in the misty rain under a stone arch. But the easy charm (and toothsome Teutonic dialogue) of Fehling and Stein make this sequence more intelligent and enjoyable than it should be. They are given just one Edenic romp in the mud before Lotte’s father interferes, marrying her off to Albert Kestner (Moritz Bleibtreu), a successful lawyer and Goethe’s superior. The heartbroken writer is driven to the brink, but finds solace in his art, and thus Werther is born.

If a dense, visceral, high art adaptation is what you’re after, steer clear of Goethe and go see Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights. But if you’re in the mood for a spirited, gauzy love story, Fehling more than delivers as the flaxen-haired Goethe; the movie is a romantic charmer, and what’s so wrong with that? Mindy Kaling (of The Office fame) recently did a funny sendup of romantic comedy heroines, along the way admitting her love for the foppy genre. She pinpoints exactly what makes them enjoyable: “I like watching people fall in love onscreen so much that I can suspend my disbelief in the contrived situations that occur only in the heightened world of romantic comedies… I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.” To get angry at them for being corny is like getting angry at The Human Centipede for being disgusting. They’re just fulfilling their divergent destinies as genre movies; it’s their declining quality that makes the label an insult. Kaling’s takedown of idiotic rom com tropes underscores how beside the point those movies now feel and how airless their creation must be. In that vein, I find it hard to fault Stölzl’s movie, which is simply a good, old-fashioned love story, no harpies or frazzled career women in sight.

Most Read



Etc.