I believe that Vincent van Gogh would have been very pleased if he could get some royalties from the films that were made about him. The “damned” artist of the generation of post-impressionists, the unrecognized genius who did not sell any painting during his life but whose works nowadays break all records of prices in public auctions, is also a star on the screens of various formats. Several biopics were dedicated to his life and death, megastars such as Kirk Douglas performed his role on screen, directors such as Vincente Minnelli, Alain Resnais, or Robert Altman tried to decipher the secrets of his brilliant art born of suffering, countless documentaries analyzed and dissected details of his life and work and documented the museums and exhibitions showing his paintings to the public, and last year we even enjoyed (I at least did) an original animation movie (“Loving Vincent“). To the long list we can now add “At Eternity’s Gate” directed by Julian Schnabel, with Willem Dafoe in the lead role. The accumulation of quantity, however, does not automatically lead to a quality leap.
It can not be said that the film is lacking in ambition, which it declares from the title. The torments of the last two years of the artist’s life are shown in particular through situations built around the information in his correspondence. The period spent together with Paul Gaugain at Arles is used to bring into dialogue many of the ideas about art and the doubts shared by van Gogh in letters to his brother Theo. The process is acceptable, such discussions could have taken place, even though the theoretical debate between the post-Impressionist trends would have been more suitable to a saloon in Paris and not to a field near Arles. But Schnabel does not stop here. Much of the screen time is used to accompany Vincent to his wanderings, seeking pieces of nature that remind some of his works. Concerning his character, the nature of his anxieties, the proportion of illness vs. psychological and social pressure, we find out not much about all these. We get Vincent, the martyr artist, based on what we know about him, and not what we see on the screen. During the almost two screen hours that cover the two last years of van Gogh’s life, the character does not evolve too much. I do not care too much about the biographical licenses (the famous use boots were painted in 1886 in Paris and not in 1888 at Arles for example) as the fact that they add nothing important to a movie that seems to want to say essential things. One of the most controversial options is the assuming of recent theories that invalidate the suicide thesis accepted by official biographies and attribute van Gogh’s death to accidental murder. Assumption or speculation? When the event is rendered as an objective cinematic narrative, the response is served in terms of what the director wants the film’s viewers to believe or feel.
Willem Dafoe achieves here one of the great roles of his career, identifying himself physiognomically and as a character with the painter and managing to overcome the over 25 years he has in addition to his hero’s age or the end of his life. He is decently supported by two actors I know less – Rupert Friend in the role of Theo and Oscar Isaac as Paul Gaugain. Several good European actors enjoy the opportunity to appear in a movie about van Gogh and we, the spectators are glad to see them, even in episodic roles: Mads Mikkelsen , Mathieu Amalric , Emmanuelle Seigner . Overall “At Eternity’s Gate” does not, in my opinion, meet the expectations. It even fails to be one of the best films about Vincent, the painter who was damned in life and is and will be loved in eternity.