Martin Eden (2019)

After the sailor Martin Eden rescues the young Arturo, the son of an industrialist family, from a brawl, he is gratefully welcomed into the boy's family home. There he meets Elena, Arturo's beautiful sister, and falls in love with her. The educated young woman from a good family becomes his obsession, partly because he sees her as a representative of the society to which he longs to belong. Martin has little formal education and resolves to work his way up as a self-taught man. He reads voraciously and sets his sights on becoming a writer. Thus, he gradually climbs the social ladder, distancing himself from his original milieu, while remaining just as alien to Elena's family and friends. His literary beginnings are arduous; his short stories are systematically rejected, and his financial situation is precarious. Martin and Elena decide to get engaged, but Elena is shocked by the raw reality of life he depicts in his short stories and would prefer that he take an administrative position at her father's company. As the political and social situation grows increasingly tense and strikes become more frequent, Martin, increasingly influenced by Herbert Spencer's theories, breaks with socialist ideals and comes to prefer individualism. As he slowly becomes a recognized but disillusioned writer, he grows distant from Elena.