Following a Best Documentary Oscar nomination for his 2016 film about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck is back with a feature film biography, The Young Karl Marx, about the founders of communism.
I interviewed Peck, who was in New York, over the phone to talk about the breadth of his work and the inspiration for his latest film.
Q: You’ve made films about the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba (both the 1990 nonfiction film Lumumba: Death of the Prophet, and the 2000 feature Lumumba), Rwanda (2005’s Sometimes in April co-starring Idris Elba and Debra Winger), James Baldwin (I am Not Your Negro, 2017), and now Marx (The Young Karl Marx, 2018). How do you choose your topics?
Raoul Peck: I always make sure that the theme, subject, characters are close to me, my life, my political engagement. I don’t have any particular brand other than that I have the responsibility to tackle subjects nobody else does.
Lumumba was about making a film I would have loved to have seen when I was twelve.
I wanted young blacks to see their own history on the big screen. Today, it’s still a big problem, telling black stories in cinema.
The last two films, on Baldwin and Marx, I started almost at the same time, and were a response to my feeling that we were entering, if not totally sinking, in a world of ignorance. As a filmmaker, those two films were my answer to that, hoping that the younger generation will use this for their own emancipation.
Lumumba was about making a film I would have loved to have seen when I was twelve. I wanted young blacks to see their own history on the big screen. Today, it’s still a big problem, telling black stories in cinema.
Q: Was a reason for making The Young Karl Marx that May 5 is the 200th anniversary of his birth?
Peck: No. I never look at dates or anniversaries when I make a project. When I started it, I didn’t know that the project would take ten years. That’s not the type of film I make. I tend to try to be totally inattentive to any pressures from the outside.
Like the James Baldwin film I Am Not Your Negro, when I started it nobody would have thought we’d have Obama as President. And then suddenly he became President. And then I never thought I’d have Donald Trump as President. Imagine if you curated your movie trying to follow any political actuality—you’re bound to make mistakes. And the same thing with Marx. When I started, it was before the crisis of 2008—it was almost taboo to speak about class struggle or profit. And it changed after 2009.
The Orchard
August Diehl, center, as Karl Marx, Vicky Krieps as his wife Jenny, and Stefan Konarske as Friedrich Engels in “The Young Karl Marx.”
Q: So, how is Marx relevant today?
Peck: Well, that’s the crazy part. Marx is even more relevant today because we have pushed back his analysis. Even countries like Russia and China are totally capitalist, with slightly different specifics. There is no part of the planet which is not totally engulfed in that system. Marx’s work, and the particular instruments he left us, are even more valuable today in a world where people don’t really know or understand, first of all how they got there, and secondly, how to get out of it.
You can apply it to any daily occurrence, like the shooting in Florida. The school kids understand quite well the relationship between a group of people not wanting to change the law to limit gun access, and an industry totally bound to make more profit, no matter what it cost.
Q: Tell us about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ romantic partners, Jenny Marx and Mary Burns.
Peck: Jenny had an incredible role beside Karl Marx. They both left very wealthy families to engage in their work. Karl and Jenny lost two children at very young ages, and in order to bury their babies, they had to pawn furniture. It was a very hard life but they were not afraid to break with their social class. And the love between them—because it was an incredible love story, stays until the last year of their life.
Engels came from a very wealthy industrial family and Mary was an Irish worker in Manchester, from totally the bottom of the society at the time. He still stayed with her until she died. There’s an incredible story of love and friendship among those four people.
Q: How does being Haitian influence your vision?
Peck: It gave me the necessary distance to question, maybe earlier than others, the contradictions of the system. Including when that system was fomenting democracy everywhere—and at the same time supporting dictatorship in my country. The same democracy that was pro-apartheid for many decades. And they started to change the situation when college kids in the United States asked for disinvestment in companies doing business with South Africa. Again, you have a perfect example of how economy determines politics. Some of the leaders who have called the loudest for “democracy” are the ones most ruthless in bringing war into other countries.
Being Hatian gave me the necessary distance to question, maybe earlier than others, the contradictions of the system. Including when that system was fomenting democracy everywhere—and at the same time supporting dictatorship in my country.
Q: How did you become a filmmaker?
Peck: I studied engineering and economics, which is where I first encountered Marx, including a seminar on [Das] Kapital. After I finished my study I started a Ph.D., but then I turned to film because I was already very involved in the artists community, political groups, as well in cinema. I decided it was about time to make a choice. I went back to study and passed the exam to attend the lead film academy. And it became my profession.
Q: How do you feel about Trump’s comment that Africa and Haiti are “shithole” countries?
Maximilian Bühn
Director Raoul Peck, February, 2017.
Peck: I stopped tracking Trump a long time ago. That’s the way to get pinned down with some stupidity, while in fact, he’s deregulating everything; damaging the most important institutions in this country. If you go into any agency, whether agricultural or business-related, the damage is incredible, and nobody’s paying attention to that.
That’s the most devastating thing happening right now under the Trump Administration. Scientists have left, posts are still not filled, and it’s been more than a year now. This is the most important catastrophe. I’m very critical of the enablers around him covering up for him. That’s the disgrace. Trump himself—he fits very well in a litany of “populist,” ignorant leaders.
The Young Karl Marx is in theaters now and available on digital platforms on Tuesday, March 6.
The third edition of “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book” co-authored by L.A.-based film historian/reviewer Ed Rampell drops in March 2018.