I am willing to turn a blind eye to many artists.
I am willing not to notice that Washington would not have been standing while he crossed the Delaware. I am willing to gloss over the the fact that The King and I was pure fabrication. I am perfectly fine with a few exaggerations in The Crucible. I don't care about any faults in Boogie Nights. I forgive Stevie Nicks for claiming she was part of the Velvet Underground. That's all fine and dandy. I don't mind one bit.
But the producers of Total Eclipse made a grevious mistake when they showed Rimbaud and Verlaine having sex.
Rimbaud was totally a bottom. I mean, he wrote poems about his love of bottoming. His theory on life was to experience every emotion there is, at once, if possible; is there a more 1890s 'bottom' philosophy than that? I didn't think so. He may have topped once or twice, but he makes mention in his journals about how hard it was to walk some days, and there remains to this day graffiti in bars of Rimbaud's anal exploits. Plus, he was nineteen and Verlaine was 34; I don't know much about man/boy love, but I assume that the bear tops the twink, at least in those days.
I'm willing to overlook the fact that movie is about the two greatest French poets of all time and neither of them spend any time writing, but the fact that they didn't even get the sex right means that both hands stayed firmly on my armrests.
Bastards.
