Films > Literature & Poetry > Goethe!
This portrait of an artist as a young man is about a poet who recognizes his own genius before anyone else. Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s father sends him to law school, to study an honorable profession, but his heart is brimming with poetry – and with love for the young, exuberant Lotte. She is poor, has no mother and many brothers, and her father wants her to marry a rich man – Goethe’s boss – whom she doesn’t love, but is obliged to wed. This unrequited love story is the focal point of Goethe!, which examines the short, tumultuous period of the artist’s life. His heartbreak motivates Goethe to write The Sorrows of Young Werther, and the rest, as they say, is history. This period film full of Sturm und Drang recounts the creation of a literary phenomenon in 18th-century Europe by a 23-year-old writer who remains one of the greatest talents to come out of Germany.
