Mark Reviews Movies: AT ETERNITY'S GATE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 4, 2018

A fellow artist says that Vincent van Gogh's work looks more like sculpture than painting, given the way he just keeps adding paint without any real outline or plan for how the work ultimately will look. In one shot of At Eternity's Gate, Van Gogh has finished a painting of trees in the field. Director Julian Schnabel changes from color to black-and-white for the shot, which moves from a close-up of the painting, to a wider shot that includes the painting against the landscape that the artist has replicated, and then back again.

That's when we really see it: not necessarily the accuracy and definitely not the color of the painting, but the texture of it. Seeing the vibrant yellows, oranges, and greens drained from the painting, as well as Van Gogh's own view of the world, we can fully appreciate how Van Gogh's technique is far from the sloppy way it's described by his fellow painter. One almost thinks that the man, whose work was barely known during his life, would want a viewer to stand as close as possible to this painting—and maybe reach out a hand and touch it. It's the way he looks at the paintings of others at a museum (without the touching, of course)—standing right there, without a sense of the full picture but with his attention on the lines and brush strokes.

Schnabel's own technique to this biography of the final years of Van Gogh's is similar. It's up close, often taking on subjective shots from the artist's point of view, in which there's a clear crack in the image on screen. The top half is normal. The bottom half is out of focus. In the middle of the two halves is a distinct, blurry line.

The point is that there is something decidedly off about the way Van Gogh sees the world. Is it a physical issue with his eyesight, which might explain the sometimes imprecise forms within his art? Is it something psychological—a symptom of a tortured mind that sent him to psychiatric hospitals on multiple occasions? Is it merely the presence of tears, filling the eyes of a man who saw tremendous beauty in the world around him and suffered much sadness from feeling as if he was not a part of that world?

This is a different kind of biography, which is less concerned with events and far more fascinated by the way its subject thinks. We learn nothing new about the course of Van Gogh's life in this film, written by Jean-Claude Carrière, Louise Kugelberg, and Schnabel. What we gain, instead, is an appreciation for the philosophical sensibilities, the desperate sense of isolation, and the complete commitment to the craft of this man. Schnabel hasn't set out to make a movie about Van Gogh. He clearly has tried to make a film that reflects how Van Gogh thought, painted, and lived.

The film takes place in the final two years or so in the artist's life. In Paris, Vincent (Willem Dafoe) has grown tired of his fellow artists. While they try to form a community that seems more bureaucratic than artistic, Vincent has tried to get them to unite to get their work seen. At a gallery, though, he has fill up the walls with his own, regularly derided paintings. Vincent finds a kindred spirit in Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), who suggests that his colleague should move south to see things in a literally different light.

In Arles in the south of France, Vincent endures harsh winds, bitter cold, and less-than-desirable living accommodations to create works that his brother Theo (Rupert Friend), who supports his older brother with a monthly allowance, cannot sell. Gauguin arrives, too, with his own income from Theo, to keep the melancholic Vincent company. Eventually, their paths split, and that's when the infamous instance involving Vincent's left ear and a razor occurs. Despite the rumors, it wasn't a gift for a prostitute. It was, in a way that even Vincent cannot comprehend in a more lucid state of mind, an attempt to get his friend to stay.

The film serves as an admirable deconstruction of the romanticized legend of Van Gogh as a tortured artist. There are no great epiphanies of inspiration here. Vincent simply spends his days walking, until a certain view or a certain change in the light (even as the sun sets) strikes him in the right way. Schnabel captures these trips with rough, handheld shots and a piano score that suddenly ceases without warning, lest we think that beauty and creativity are a constant in Vincent's life.

He lives in Arles and later Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen at the age of 37, as an outcast—scorned by men, women, and even children, who believe his behavior is as strange and incomprehensible as his art. In that equation, Vincent himself only understands his art, and even then, it is simply as a compulsion.

There is no great mystery in the life or death of Van Gogh in this film. It's a life lived in mental pain and confusion, in terror of himself and others, and in momentary realizations of some higher purpose, which he always comes to question. While Dafoe may be almost three decades older than Van Gogh at the time of the artist's death, the age difference plays quite well against Vincent's poor health and troubled life, and after all, we often think of our great artists as ageless and immortal. At Eternity's Gate sees Van Gogh as quite mortal and ageless in a much less idealistic way.

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