Sheer idiocy. I've seen many biographical films, and few of them have been told with the complete witlessness of "Total Eclipse." This is a story about the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine (Leonardo DiCaprio and David Thewlis), two brilliant but tortured artists who had an unhappy but surprisingly long sexual and mental relationship. I'm sure Rimbaud and Verlaine were indeed both brilliant and both artists, but there's barely any evidence of it here. Rimbaud is referred to as a genius repeatedly, but the most intellectual thing we ever see him doing is referring to someone else's work as "authentic sh*t" just before urinating on him. Verlaine is no better; he's a pathetic drunk who has married into money and spends most of his waking moments insulting and abusing his wife and her family (when not providing his wife's gratuitous nude scenes). Rare are the times when we see either of them writing poetry, and rarer still are the times when we hear any of it.
The story begins with Rimbaud arriving at Verlaine's house at the latter's request, after he's read some of his first work. Rimbaud belches, smokes his pipe at the table, and insults everyone seated with him in ways crude enough to make any master poet groan at the wasted opportunities. Verlaine is smitten with him, either because of the looks he throws in between stealing the household items and announcing "I have to p*ss," or because of the classical music score which follows him around. Soon they are having an illicit affair, though Verlaine does visit back home once in a while to set his wife's hair on fire and throw their baby carriage against the wall.
From there the movie breaks down into a pointless, arbitrary series of events that I guess were included because they really happened, but haven't been shaped into any sort of story, and certainly don't do anything to make us care about the characters. Verlaine leaves his wife, goes back to his wife, and then leaves her again. He and Rimbaud move from France, to Belgium, to London, back to Belgium, etc. As they circle Europe endlessly and the movie slows to a a crawl, whatever qualities and talents they had in real life, in real life they remain.
What else. Everyone speaks English in their own accents, although the characters are all supposed to be French (if I remember correctly one character even starts out as an American-accented girl, then grows into a French-accented woman—good luck following the flashbacks). We're given a fairly good look at the proper way to drink absinthe, which I suppose will come in handy now that they've decriminalized it. At some point we notice that the movie is employing its nudity strategically: most every major character is seen naked at some point, but DiCaprio and Romane Bohringer are given shots and lighting clearly designed to highlight their attractiveness, while Thewlis
is not. The movie finally boils down to two horrible people meeting, having a life-changing relationship and ending up as two horrible people who are a few years older.