Dafoe embodies genius, madness of van Gogh
Willem Dafoe’s inspired and heartfelt performance as Vincent van Gogh raises “At Eternity’s Gate” far above standard biopics. Along with the direction of painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel, Dafoe’s work offers an affecting vision of what van Gogh’s deeply troubled and otherworldly inner life might have been like.
The film is a dreamlike depiction of the last days of the artist’s short life (he died at 37). Van Gogh’s musings, often spoken over a dark screen, and scenes of his solitary work alternate with sequences of his interactions with the few others he felt close to, mostly his brother Theo and Paul Gauguin.
The movie begins with van Gogh’s assertion, never to be realized, that “I just want to be one of them.” He may be referring to the platoons of painters and sculptors who are making Paris the center of the art world. Or he may simply mean anyone who is blessedly free of the kind of demons that haunt his soul.
Van Gogh is attracted to what he sees as the rebellious spirit of Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), who openly disdains the Paris art scene, an attitude that we finally come to see as the loud talk of an ambitious man. The two discuss the role of nature in painting and the genuine source of inspiration, and Gauguin is not reticent about criticizing van Gogh’s technique of layering on the paint until his canvases seem more like sculptures.
Given the men’s differences, a parting of the ways becomes inevitable, and the scene in which Gauguin informs his friend that he will be leaving is among the movie’s most wrenching. Van Gogh howls like an abandoned child — he is truly crushed. His one steady relationship is with brother Theo (Rupert Friend), an art dealer who supports him financially and emotionally.
The brothers’ mutual affection is deeply moving, particularly in a scene when Theo visits Vincent in a hospital. Theo crawls into his bed, and Vincent clings to him like an ailing child to its mother. It’s a lifeline for the artist, whose isolation and peculiarities earned him the ire of his neighbors in Arles. For as much as van Gogh is seen here as the holy innocent, he is also capable of explosive rages. Only in painting can he escape his torments.
Van Gogh’s obvious mental turmoil, including the famous incident in which he cut off part of his ear, eventually lands him in an asylum in St.-Remy. In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, van Gogh talks to a priest (Mads Mikkelsen) who sees in his paintings only signs of madness. Here is where van Gogh best articulates what his art means to him and the uniqueness of his vision.
It’s a conversation replete with spiritual overtones and a well-written scene, although dialogue is not generally a strength of this film. (Surprising, because one of the writers is the celebrated Jean-Claude Carrière, known for his work with Luis Buñuel.)
Schnabel’s subjective camerawork, in which shots are jittery or partly out of focus, is a distraction. I am also uneasy with Schnabel’s decision to endorse the theory that van Gogh’s death was not a suicide; this idea remains controversial.
Don’t be put off by these quibbles. Schnabel is a capable filmmaker, as anyone who has seen “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” can attest. He clearly has been profoundly moved by the life and work of his fellow artist, and the movie feels like something extremely important to him.
Perhaps his best decision was hiring Dafoe (who despite being much older bears a striking resemblance here to his character), with whom he worked before in a film about a very different kind of artist, “Basquiat.” In “At Eternity’s Gate,” Dafoe often works in silence but tells us everything we need to know with his face and eyes.
Small wonder that his performance won the best actor award at this year’s Venice Film Festival.