The key word in the title of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is “sorrows,” translated from the German Leiden, which really means something closer to “suffering,” like the kind one feels from a chronic disease; it originates from a Middle-German word that also meant “to be hated.” Enlightenment rationalism had reshaped the European continent into an industrial machine that was cold, calculating, and efficient, and the young literati wanted nothing to do with it. They returned instead to an invented past, they looked at ruins with a sense of ennui, they rejected Adam Smith’s rational marketplace for Adam Smith’s moral theory of sentiment, and, when a young failed poet named Thomas Chatterton killed himself, they valorized his act as the ultimate rebellion. The Sorrows of Young Werther launched Goethe to literary acclaim not for the title character but for his Leiden — that feeling of alienation from the modern world that readers felt and finally found in the 24-year-old wunderkind’s tale of young romance.
José Lourenço’s Young Werther curiously leaves this crucial word out of its title. The opening sequence includes a cutesy introduction of its source material that compares its initial literary success to “Beatlemania” (a metaphor that works but presumes an audience of boomers rather than young folks). Not many films wish for their audiences to be aware of the influence of their source material, but for some reason, Young Werther wishes to pay homage to Goethe, albeit in a teenager’s blithe tone. There is a character named Werther in this, yes, and he loves another who cannot love him back. But here, his personality and his predicament (and his wardrobe) take center stage, allowing the elements of the original story that most resemble YA romance to take in this limelight. This is hardly an unfair way of looking at Goethe’s story: his contribution to the bildungsroman and its subsequent success absolutely paved the way for coming-of-age doomed romance stories. But it’s an ahistorical Werther detached from his heavy Leiden that would ultimately define Romanticism.
The Werther (Douglas Booth) here jaunts around 2024 Toronto streets, fresh off the train from Montreal, looking for a way to spend his trust and his newly lavish life. He overhears the woes of several young women enjoying their gelati from Wychwood’s Bar Ape (local Torontonians may be pleased to know that local businesses are not made anonymous — an odd attempt at authenticity for a film shot mostly in the cheaper suburbs of nearby Hamilton) and charms them. His eyes are mostly set on Charlotte (Alison Pill), whose tête-à-têtes, filled with equal parts wit and sincerity, grab Werther’s attention, so long as he’s not focused on her carefree dancing and flirty demeanor. But she’s from a wealthy family and already engaged to a walking symbol of the decent bourgeois life expected of her: Albert (Patrick J. Adams, as if arriving straight from the set of Suits). Werther knows that Charlotte yearns to be free from the demands of her status; he also knows that represents this freedom and plans to seduce her away from Albert. Montage sequence leads to montage sequence as Werther and Charlotte spend weeks pretending that they’re mere friends. But as Werther nurtures more serious, growing feelings toward Charlotte, she feels the beckoning of the stable life.
Booth plays Werther as a 20-something iteration of Rushmore’s (1998) Max Fischer, whose innumerable interests and zest for achievement are matched only by a fragile need for validation and connection. He speaks as if from a novel and enunciates each word as if performing theater — qualities also shared by the world of Wes Anderson. If that weren’t enough, his entire wardrobe is a ghost of Ivy prep’s past: another nod to Wes with the double-breasted, rust-orange corduroy suit, a blindingly pink polo matched with Kelly green cardigan, and a three-piece Donegal tweed suit complete with flat cap all paint Werther as a nostalgic eccentric, especially compared to the staid workday suits of Albert. This Werther is quirky, loud but brilliant, an art school fuckboi whose place in our culture is not that far off from what Goethe’s Werther was for his.
But the Werther show becomes grating after a bit. The ultra-widescreen cinematography hardly fills its space, preferring Anderson-lite center compositions with hardly any set design to fill the background. Needle drops like Girls’ “Lust for Life” and obligatory slo-mo party sequences fully announce the youthful genre the film inhabits, but these rarely appear, giving Booth’s Werther the full responsibility for the film’s energy. Sadly, even his character falls flat thanks to his quirky diction that switches between literary half-paragraphs and contemporary Internet-speak — a fitting quality for a film that can’t decide if it wants to be a literary adaptation or another YA romance cooked up by marketing departments. That said, its faults are mostly misjudgments. Young Werther does not talk down to its audience, it doesn’t rely on pop culture references to stay in 2024, nor does it take any grandstanding against its source material. This Werther really is identifiable as a cultural descendant of Goethe’s Werther, and the basic moral choices at the heart of the novel still resonate on screen.
But this is also a Werther who feels sadness, not Leiden. His alienation from Charlotte is reduced to a simple romantic frustration rather than being compounded by the additional alienation from bourgeois society. The film’s Werther is also a type now familiar and dated to us, rather than being a truly radical temptation for a trapped Charlotte. In a way, no contemporary Werther adaptation could carry the historical weight of the original. But the concerns of the Romantics are still here: Silicon Valley preaches that the only good society is the efficient society, parking lots have replaced landscapes, and we all look to an idealized and invented past to find our values. Young Werther touches none of that; Werther’s concerns are selfish and myopic, and his dynamic shift is simply a sign of personal maturity. But even this stripped-down, sorrowless Werther can recall the radical origins — and radical potential — of the coming-of-age story, and that’s a good first step.
DIRECTOR: José Lourenço; CAST: Douglas Booth, Alison Pill, Patrick J. Adams, Iris Apatow; DISTRIBUTOR: Lionsgate; IN THEATERS/STREAMING: December 13; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
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