Age doesn’t define Willem Dafoe
63-year-old stars as van Gogh, who died at 37.
NEW YORK – Vincent van Gogh was 37 when he died; Willem Dafoe is 63. So why is he playing the painter in a new movie?
It’s a question that fans of art and film have been asking on social media ever since “At Eternity’s Gate,” which closed the New York Film Festival over the weekend, was announced last year.
But according to director Julian Schnabel, who was Oscar-nominated 10 years ago for his French-language drama “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” there was no one else but Dafoe who could play the famously tortured artist.
“I never thought of using another actor,” Schnabel told Esquire this month. “Vincent van Gogh was pretty worldweary and torn up by 37, and I think Willem is in pretty good shape for a 63-yearold guy.”
It helps that “Eternity” is less a straightforward biopic of the Dutch painter than it is a surrealist portrait of his final years, spent in and out of mental hospitals while creating some of his most famous works. Much of the nearly two-hour film is dialogue-free, instead relying on voiceovers and tight closeups of Dafoe’s sharp, weathered face to clue audiences in on where his character is emotionally and mentally.
Schnabel frequently employs vibrant colors, shaky handheld camera and half-blurred frames, creating a dreamlike world reminiscent of one of van Gogh’s paintings.
The movie poses lofty questions about nature, beauty, religion and legacy, with van Gogh himself suggesting that “God made me a painter for people who aren’t born yet” in a standout scene with an inquisitive priest (Mads Mikkelsen). It also mythologizes the art icon with more mysteries: Did he really cut off his own ear because of frightening hallucinations, or was it to win back an old friend, painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac)? And did he shoot and kill him- self, or was he attacked and murdered by teenage boys while painting outdoors?
“Eternity” makes no attempt to give answers, frustrating critics from Screen Daily, who complained that it “offers little excitement or fresh insight,” and Slant, who called it a “disappointingly self-indulgent exercise.” But the ambiguity precisely was what drew Dafoe, who some awards prognosticators believe will earn his fourth Oscar nomination for the role (he was up last year for “The Florida Project”) – if voters aren’t turned off by the drama’s lethargic pace and hyper-stylized look.
“It didn’t feel like a traditional movie,” Dafoe said at a post-screening Q&A Friday. “It felt like we were gathering things that we were interested in and interesting things would happen.”
“At Eternity’s Gate”arrives in theaters Nov. 16 in New York and Los Angeles, and expands wider Nov. 21.