"Sometimes they say I'm mad, but the grain of madness makes the best of art."
There are any number of tonal approaches one can take when
recounting the life of a famous figure. You can focus on their achievements and
fame or downplay that in favour of focussing on their own personality, you
could specify on their place within the broader scope of art and the legacy of
what they brought to the field or try to observe them in a vacuum with the
attention being placed on them as an individual. You could even negate telling
a more cohesive version of their life story in favour of simply capturing a
mood of what it felt like to be that person.
Concerning the final years of artist Vincent Van Gogh
(Willem Dafoe). Living in southern France Van Gogh is in the midst of a
creative outpouring as he constructs many of his most recognised and enduringly
popular works. However amid this plethora of talent is a deeply troubled and tortured
persona, as his life is plagued by poverty and mental illness in a society that
regards him as a failure and a madman.
Van Gogh often typifies our cultural image of the tortured
artist, a figure whose genius is misunderstood by the world around them and
whose suffering in turn forms the substance of their art. That broader
perception of Van Gogh seems to be an essential element to ‘At Eternity’s Gate’
as director Julian Schnabel takes the famous artist as a figure for what it
means to be truly isolated and out of touch with all around you, to find the
empathy of others only in fleeting moments and to strive towards your creative
calling when all around you insist otherwise. He takes the story of the most
famous painter in history and frames it a manner that is both specific and
universal.
It is not a conventional biopic, unconcerned with recapping
the known points of a famous life. Instead ‘At Eternity’s Gate’ is concerned
with the process of its subject and the underlying values he holds that define
his life. Several times through the movie Van Gogh is asked why he paints and
his response is that he could not live doing anything else. After inhabiting
his space for the length of this film it’s hard to disagree with his statement,
you feel completely in tune with Van Gogh’s search for meaning and desire only
to further his art.
That intimate feeling comes through in Schnabel’s direction
just as much as the screenplay. His camera moves ostentatiously but is always
intensely focussed on Van Gogh as a subject, remaining close to his facial
expressions and reflecting his own point of view. In moments of emotional
instability the camera moves more violently as if the world itself has lost all
control just as the artists own psyche has. Through its visual prowess ‘At
Eternity’s Gate’ masterfully translates the shifting attitudes and emotional
state of its subject before even a word has been spoken.
Obviously a film concerning one of the most acclaimed
painter of all time would be expected to have stellar cinematography, which ‘At
Eternity’s Gate’ most certainly does. The colour palette reproduces the moods
and shades of Van Gogh’s paintings, emphasising the rays of light and lines of
motion within each frame. The DP Benoit Delhomme brings a majestic sense of
freedom to each image, filling every wide shot with an expansive view of the
landscape the makes you understand why Von Gogh was so intent on capturing it
through his art.
Such an intensely focussed view allows the film to be a
stunning showcase for its lead performer. At 63 years old Willem Dafoe is
almost a full three decades older than Van Gogh upon his death, but in a
strange way it works for the portrayal at hand. Dafoe’s age bestows a sense of
world weariness to Van Gogh, as if his mental torture has taken on an exterior
form. It furthers his alienation from the world around him. That being said,
Dafoe’s performance is phenomenal enough to justify the age gap regardless. It
is both immensely powerful and appropriately subtle, not reducing the artist to
a series of emotional outbursts but instead conveying the more deep seated
dread that permeated his life every day. It allows him to channel the momentary
emotions Van Gogh felt in his lifetime as well as the deeper philosophical
ponderings that would risk feeling overly obtuse in the script, but through
Dafoe’s performance become utterly engrossing.
Though Dafoe is very much at the heart of this film and the
only actor required to give a performance of great depth, the supporting cast
are excellent at reinforcing this singular vision of Van Gogh and how he
relates to the world. The always terrific Oscar Isaac serves as one of the few
people the painter can relate to with his portrayal of artist Paul Gauguin. Another
sympathetic voice is Rupert Friend as Vincent’s brother Theo, while his sparse
appearances would make it inaccurate to say that Theo and Vincent’s dynamic if
a major narrative point of the film the scenes that feature the two of them
does make for some of the film’s most emotionally resonant moments. Meanwhile
Mads Mikkelsen only appears for one scene yet his role is still vital to the
film’s overall conceit, a part that Mikkelson delivers with ease.
Schnabel does risk becoming overly repetitive as the film
progresses, repeating the same philosophical talking points. But that does
stress the significance of those talking points in how they drove Van Gogh’s motivation
to paint. The film elevated in how it skips the usual dramatic points of a conventional
biopic in favour of the more nuances approach to exploring its subject. A prime
example of this would be to take note of how the film omits to show Van Gogh’s
self-mutilation of cutting off his ear, instead only focussing on the build-up
and aftermath of the incident. It is not a film concerned with simply restaging
or recounting the artist’s life, instead it seeks to capture a prevailing atmosphere
and outlook that defined his life. In other words it is not about what Van Gogh
painted, but what he could see.
A poetic and visually expressive portrayal of an artist’s
life that features a truly phenomenal lead performance by Willem Dafoe.