The film is based on documents and works of two great French poets - Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. This film is a history of human relations, a history of friendship, if you want. There is love, cruelty, mutual admiration and bitter despair. It's a kind of relations that cannot last too long yet they lasted long enough with breaks, ups and downs. Those two were addicted to each other.
The two characters were performed by David Thewlis as Verlaine and Leonardo di Caprio as Rimbaud. They both played very well. But what I like most in this film is the music which perfectly reflects the spirit of that time and the drama depicted there. It is dramatic, even tragic, listening to it you can't help expecting something terrible happen but actually nothing happens. Like that epoch that was full of unfulfilled expectations, new discoveries in arts, foreseeing of new horizons. Like our heroes who comptelety belonged to this period of brilliant insights and dramatic falls. Both men were alive long after their relations had finished. But did they really finish?
The film introspects more Verlaine than Rimbaud. Verlaine was older, more famous from the two. Their relations reminds of impressionisic paintings of Gaugin and van Gogh (those two were in difficult relations too that somehow remind of the relations of our two poets, those who are interested can read Lust for Life by Irving Stone). Both were famous, both were geniuses and none of them were able to sacrifice himself for another's sake. And this what makes the tragedy but also what makes them individuals. One can see a person good or wicked but individuality stays above all the other features.
The film deals with the eternal problem of the individuality. Why cannot the artist share his talent, why is he doomed for solitude? Verlaine and Rimbaud were not competitors, they were very different for that. Verlaine broke the classic codex of poetry but Rimbaud broke the pattern of Verlaine. The latter was able to appreciate it but actually each of them lived in his own world and failed to understand each other... Sometimes they thought they did understand. It was painful for both.
So these two people had quite different characters. Verlaine seemed to look deeper in his friend's inner self. He was more of an intravert, more humane from the two. Rimbaud seemed quite the contrary but only on the surface. In the depth of his soul he cared about his friend as we can see from the couple of episodes. It's interesting how in those moments a true self glimpses.
I especially like the finish of the film. The Rimbaud's sister comes to the old Verlaine and asks him to send her all the works of her brother in order she could destroy them. The old poet promises her to do so but when she leaves just tears her visit card into pieces. We see a flashback that have become a turning point in their relations but this time the cruelty is turned into tenderness. Verlaine's final words in the film: "After his death I dream about him every night"... It really means that death can destroy a body but cannot destroy dreams and fantasy that will always live in the soul of man.
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