gavin6942 Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his mentor Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis) engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.Whether the main characters in this film are homosexual, bisexual or something else does not matter. That is part of the beauty of the way the subject matter is approached: we are not to think of these two as anything other than two passionate, and sometimes crazy, lovers... what the courts thought of them is beside the point.And it is a great story. I concede I know nothing of Rimbaud or Verlaine. I believe they were the subject of the German film "Michael", though I may be mistaken (and even then the names were changed). But it seems it is not important to even know them... this is what it is like to be in a passionate and destructive relationship. Is it beautiful or terrifying? Certainly it helps produce great art, but at what cost?

bkoganbing Total Eclipse is the story of the relationship between two men who definitely made their mark on French literature. Poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud have been compared to Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, but aside from being gay the pairs have little in common. Wilde is a universally recognized talent who had the misfortune to fall in love with a spoiled young aristocrat in Douglas who had some pretenses to literary talent. Douglas was spoiled, but both he and Wilde conducted themselves well in public.Verlaine and Rimbaud were a pair of talented louts as Total Eclipse shows us in graphic detail. Wilde married for convention's sake at the time and did have two sons and was a loving husband. His is a Victorian Brokeback Mountain story. Verlaine was a drunk and an abusive husband who regularly beat on his wife and child who was totally fascinated by young Rimbaud. He was ten years older than Rimbaud in real life, the film does make him seem a great deal older. He did read some of Rimbaud's work as a teenage prodigy and sent for the country lad. You can feel sorry for Wilde and do in the films that tell his story. Verlaine as played by David Thewlis is a really hateful person, gay audiences can't work up any sympathy for him.However Rimbaud as played by Leonardo DiCaprio by look and talent makes you perfectly understand why Rimbaud became so obsessed with him. Verlaine was a political man, he was a supporter of the Paris Commune and was in fear of the police who would have loved to nail him on a morals charge if not on a political one. Rimbaud didn't have a political opinion in the world, he was a peasant kid from the Ardennes who partied hardy, drove Verlaine crazy and jealous, but both learned and fed off each other artistically. I found it interesting that Rimbaud and Verlaine flee to Great Britain of all places to be freer, the same place that in the next generation would persecute poor Oscar Wilde.DiCaprio and Thewlis play a couple of louts, but a fascinating pair of louts. Total Eclipse has both these guys eclipsing the supporting cast around them, that probably is the main weakness of the film. Still fans of both men shouldn't miss this film.

lzyit03 I think that Leo looked much to old to having sex with a guy thats like 5 times his age. The sex scenes were very racy and showed a lot. Leo didn't show much. The other guy showed a lot. I wonder why he picked this role. I don't think that it did much justice to his career. He couldn't be comfortable doing those sex scenes. Leo was pretty hott though. They did a horrible job of aging him at the end.Overall i thought that it sucked. The older guy looked Sick. Leo had to be agood actor to do some of the scenes. Gays wern't around back then or at least not noticed. It wouldbe weird if that movie won any awards!!!!!!!!!!!!!

speechwrite I caught this movie late at night on HBO because I couldn't quite sleep. Didn't help much in that regard because it made me laugh out loud at the bad parts -- which it seemed to be made of.A boyish, babyfat Leo DiCaprio was just the start. His leap from this to 'Titanic' is more than epic. I was hoping to see something insightful about Rimbaud, the real-life poet DiCaprio played, who influenced Bob Dylan among others. but I'm not even sure there was a phrase of his poetry in the script. He writes furiously and produces plenty of pages of something that he shows to his mother. After reading intently for a few agonizing minutes, she says, "What does it mean?" My sentiments, exactly.A great example where reading the book would be the right choice.