Marbot
length: 70 minutes
Marbot is a titular fictional character from a novel written by Wolfgang Hildesheimer. It is a documentary novel, in which the main protagonist encounters and debates with the men of letters and artists from the early 19th century. The novel defies carefully created fiction and inquires into the issue of the relationship between art and reality.
Our adaptation borrows the novel’s main storyline which we interpret rather loosely. Marbot holds a dialogue with an ageing Goethe, the iconic authority of the period. He approaches Goethe as he is the author of a novel about freedom, The Sorrows of Young Werther. Marbot takes this step as a result of his incestuous relationship with his mother, whose fulfilment caused their definitive separation. His internal defence of the loving relationship with his mother is the only possible point of departure for him, albeit ineffective, to get to know European culture, especially literature and the creative arts. He invents a utopian concept of art criticism, based on psychoanalysis, which is mediated for the viewer as a unique solution of the artistic form of our production.
The sole owner of the rights is the agency Suhrkamp Verlag GmbH & CO.KG, www.suhrkamp.de. The rights are represented in the Czech Republic by Aura-pont Ltd.
Studio Hrdinů thanks Anita Pelánová for providing the translation of the novel Marbot without a royalty claim.
