Willem Dafoe talks about playing van Gogh in ‘At Eternity’s Gate’
“AT ETERNITY’S Gate,” opening on Wednesday, chronicles the final days of Vincent van Gogh. We spoke recently to Willem Dafoe about his approach to embodying the painter.
Q: One of the film’s most powerful scenes has you coming inside on a windy day. You take off your boots, and then just stare at them. Finally, you begin to paint them. It’s unusual for a film to capture the actual creative impulse so directly and persuasively. How did you approach that scene?
A: That scene was very important to me and was one of the most challenging scenes, because I was painting in real time. I was rehearsed and coached, but I was under the gun and had to paint well. In the painting, what’s conveyed that I like so much is that you can really see how a series of marks and a series of colours — little individual acts — start to come together in this swirl to make something that captures those boots. Van Gogh said great painting is not painting what is there but what you see. It’s not a good likeness, the colours are not “correct.” But what you can see is how those marks start to work with each other to make a thing. You experience those boots. You’re brought into the presentness of that creation, and I think that’s what good painting does.
Q: Another scene has you outside in a field, around sunset, obviously feeling euphoric. What was the source of this euphoria in van Gogh?
A: By painting and being out in nature, he started to see in a different way. That really opened things up, not just to painting, but to the nature of things. Van Gogh talked a lot about turning away from the visible and turning toward the invisible. He was talking about a spiritual impulse. But I think when you see in a different way, you get a sense of the rise and fall of things, of how things come in and out of existence. That’s a very powerful thing. It puts you in touch with things as they are.
Marrying painting as a physical exercise to some of the things van Gogh wrote in his letters, I started to get a sense of this power, this ecstasy that he felt, that you get little inklings of when you perform sometimes. You’re lost in the action, and you’re in the swirl of things. You’re in the swirl of things that are bigger than you. I think we all long for that. That’s what he talks about when he says he wants to share this vision that’s basically better than the reality we think of, the surface reality. He was connected to it, but it’s what made him a little mad — this ecstasy: How was he to reconcile it with the prosaic events of life?
Q: The film follows the theory in the recent biography that he was shot. Why do you think people bullied and tormented him? People didn’t understand him, obviously. But were they also motivated by envy?
A: I think so. He had this intense inner life. He didn’t develop other skills. He didn’t know how to deal with people. It’s a bit like when we did the (Vietnam war) movie “Platoon,” you had people that went off to fight this horrible, impossible war. They came back, they didn’t know how to relate their
experience to other people, and
By painting and being out in nature, he (Vincent van Gogh) started to see in a different way. That really opened things up, not just to painting, but to the nature of things. — William Dafoe, actor
it caused them a great amount of stress and confusion and rejection. There’s sort of a parallel thing: Van Gogh is experiencing something he doesn’t know how to share, except through his art. His art is taking such a leap from what is considered acceptable and fashionable and digestible in the day that he feels alone. Because that is the most articulate he can be, that is the greatest service he can do, and people aren’t quite taking it. So what is he left with? He’s got very few social skills. People talked a lot about how difficult he was. In the movie, you see him in this private world where he’s communing with nature, and he’s trying to contact something through nature. He’s got this strong spiritual impulse and this strong desire for service. But he keeps on getting interrupted with these formal interviews or encounters. The movie is very structured on these two different kinds of scenes.
Q: How did you approach playing him physically? Was there anything special you were trying to convey?
A: I believe in the wisdom of the body. Doing things — that’s the key to everything. I don’t think so much about psychology or dramaturgy. I feel much more like a dancer than an actor. Acting is usually associated with great texts and interpretations and choices. I don’t feel like that. I feel best when I try to inhabit something, I try to lose myself in an action. It’s that kind of flexibility that opens up my heart and opens up my mind. Hopefully, if I do it in good faith, and do it in a true way, then the audience experiences it with me. That’s the idea: to have things happen to you and be transparent, not to dish out an explanation or show them a bag of tricks. I’m more and more interested in the simple quality of being there, and in the level of engagement being total.
Q: The meatiest conversations are between Vincent and Gauguin. How hard was it for him to disagree with Gauguin over their approach to art?
A: They were very different personalities. They painted in very different ways. But there’s evidence that they admired each other, even if, socially, it wasn’t the happiest of friendships. The key is expressed in the movie when Gauguin says, “You’ve got to use your mind, you’ve got to think.” Van Gogh says, “I don’t invent the picture. I find it in nature, I just have to free it.” I think that expresses volumes.
He always works from models, and the truth is I kind of relate to that as a performer, because I have a parallel thing: I value very much starting with imitation. It’s very useful. The ideas happen in the doing. I have no ideas to express or anything particular to convey. But I will give my body and my heart and everything I’ve got to submitting to a situation that works on me. As it works on me, there are discoveries, planned and unplanned. But if I open myself to it, we experience something very human and something that wakes us up, and reminds us how we need each other. — WPBloomberg