Movie review: Willem Dafoe an impassioned van Gogh in 'At Eternity's Gate'
“At Eternity's Gate” - ★ ★ ★
Julian Schnabel's fascinating and at times frustrating new drama about Vincent van Gogh, “At Eternity's Gate,” exists, as its title suggests, in a liminal space. Much like the painter, who died without the recognition he deserved, the movie approaches greatness without quite achieving it.
Set in the final 2½ years of van Gogh's life — beginning with his meeting the painter Paul Gauguin in late 1887, and ending with the artist's death in the summer of 1890 — the film, which stars an uncannily convincing Willem Dafoe, is at its best when it shows rather than tells. Despite being 25 years older than van Gogh was when he died, Dafoe delivers an impassioned performance, his deeply lined face capturing the mix of agony and ecstasy that this tortured artist must have felt.
In often wordless scenes, cinematographer Benoît Delhomme's handheld camera seems to alternate between dancing with Dafoe in some scenes and then attacking him in others, running alongside the actor here, and then swirling around him lyrically there. When Schnabel, a painter himself, turns his attention to the act of mark-making, van Gogh's creative process feels palpably alive.
But the film marries these effective if self-consciously impressionistic visuals with an all too on-the-nose screenplay (co-written by Jean-Claude Carrière, Louise Kugelberg and Schnabel). No one would call “At Eternity's Gate” a talky film, but when it does focus on the words over pictures, it's less than eloquent.
“Maybe God made me a painter for people who aren't born yet,” says van Gogh. That's a beautiful (if slightly egotistical) sentiment, but it doesn't sound quite right coming from the mouth of a man plagued by self-doubt and depression.
Much of the talking, when it occurs, takes place in the context of conversations, arguments and entreaties between van Gogh and his friend Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), his doctor (Mathieu Amalric) and his brother (Rupert Friend), or in voice-over narration. At its worst, it can be as exciting as listening to people talk about drying paint.
“At Eternity's Gate” takes its name from a canvas of an old man, made in the final months of van Gogh's life, that thrums with a foreboding of the subject's mortality.
In the context of the film, those three words take on another meaning. “I see eternity in a flat landscape,” van Gogh says. “Am I the only one?” Here, he isn't talking about squeamishness before death, but a feeling of being out of step with the world. Only in art, as van Gogh explains elsewhere in the film, can flowers remain alive forever, and women eternally young.
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Starring: Willem Dafoe, Oscar Isaac, Mathieu Amalric, Rupert Friend, Mads Mikkelsen
Directed by: Julian Schnabel
Other: A CBS Films release. Opening at Chicago's AMC River East 21 and Century Centre Cinema. Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some mature thematic material. 111 minutes