BEFORE: Well, I couldn't really do a week of Willem Dafoe (carrying over from "Vox Lux") without taking the opportunity to watch the film that he recently received an Oscar nomination for. Not when I have access to this big pile of Academy screeners, and the ceremony is still fresh in my mind.
THE PLOT: A look at the life of painter Vincent Van Gogh's during the time he lived in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
AFTER: One of my bosses sort of poisoned the well on this one, because she told me about it after she watched it last year, and she didn't like it - but then, she's got a personal vendetta against the films of Julian Schnabel for some reason. In particular, she didn't like the way that the filmmaker here tried to mimic Van Gogh's vision problems by deliberately fogging up the bottom half of the lens at times, or tilting the camera at odd angles to perhaps suggest madness, and similar tricks with light and color, or lack thereof.
But I tried to keep an open mind while watching this - though the early sequence where Van Gogh takes off his shoes, and the camera angle keeps changing, or the picture keeps rotating, was quite annoying. I think, however, that it's more important to focus on the story being told here, rather than the odd methods used to display it. The film starts following Van Gogh when he was living in Paris, holding unsuccessful group art shows, hanging out with Paul Gauguin, and complaining about the terrible light and lack of color in such a big, industrial city.. I can't say he was wrong, because once he heads out to the village of Arles, and experiences the bright blue color of the rural sky, along with the oranges and yellows of the fields and farms, it's a revelation for us as well as him. He's so in awe of the beautiful sunset that he breaks into a run across the field, and honestly, I had no idea that being a painter was such a physical activity. Later he's seen walking across the fields and climbing up rocky hills with his easel and paints on his back, and art suddenly looks exhausting, despite its reputation as such a static activity.
Reference is made here not just to how Van Gogh saw the world, but how he made his way through it, which was, umm, not well. This guy managed to get black-out drunk on absinthe and then stumble around the streets picking fights, or walk through fields to find farmer women to pose for him before molesting them, or basically just chase kids around, forcing the parents of Arles to beat him with rocks and sticks when he was totally out of his own head. It's no wonder that he got himself locked up in asylums more than once, not to mention pissing everyone in town off, and eventually getting shot in the stomach and claiming to not know how. Well, at least he managed to unite the fine citizens of Arles, who came together and signed a petition to keep him from returning there.
During 15 months in Arles, Van Gogh completed about 200 paintings and about 100 drawings, so this was a very prolific period, despite (or perhaps because of) his relative isolation, broken up only by visits from Gauguin that were funded by Vincent's brother, Theo. Van Gogh and Gauguin painted outside together, having discussions about the beauty of nature, the nature of beauty, and so on. While we'll never know exactly what they said, this film takes a good stab at extrapolating how each man felt about the world, based on the different ways they painted it.
It seems, however that when Gauguin made plans to leave Arles - making references to his desire to chuck everything and go live on an island somewhere, which of course we all know he later did, by moving to Tahiti - that's when Van Gogh went a little nuts and sliced off part (or all) of his ear. I grew up being told that Van Gogh did this because of his love for a woman - and that sort of seems possible, I guess - but another theory is that he asked that woman to give the ear to Gauguin, so the other artist wouldn't leave him. So the intended result may not be what we thought it was, but I'm still not exactly sure how slicing off his ear was intended to bring this about. "Oh, Vincent, you shouldn't have! No, seriously, you should not have put your ear in a box and given it to me. I think I'll go pack now. Bye-eee!"
After this, Van Gogh entered the asylum in Saint-Remy, which was a converted monastery, and he was supervised by a Protestant priest. He had two cells, one of which he used as a studio, both with bars on the windows, and this is where he produced some of his most well-known paintings, including "Starry Night", along with paintings of the clinic and its gardens. But we'll never really know if the exaggerated qualities of works like "Starry Night" were merely experiments in color, or a reaction to the work of the Impressionists like Renoir and Monet.
But still, this all changes what we think we know about Van Gogh, right? We've heard again and again that he only sold one painting during his lifetime, so the easiest assumption is that the art world wasn't ready for his work, or perhaps that he saw things so differently that nobody could accept his style of artistry. But, what if he was just an asshole? What if nobody bought his paintings because they didn't like him, or if they knew that giving him money would only mean that he'd go get drunk, stumble around town picking fights or chasing kids, and the whole dumb cycle would start all over again? Maybe he's the reason nobody wants to give money to an independent artist - of course, years later Hitler became the reason why people SHOULD give money to independent artists, because it could keep them out of politics.
When Van Gogh first moves into the studio in Arles, and I don't know HOW anyone could choose to work in a space where the rooms are painted such an ugly shade of yellow (so maybe there is something to this whole "vision problem" theory...), the woman helping to set up the space says something about how he should bathe more often, and that he might be a little more attractive if he smelled a little nicer. Ah, another insight into the world of a man who not only was a big drinker and smoker, but also went out into the fields and rolled around in the dirt to commune better with nature, to get a tactile understanding of his subject matter. So the conclusion is that this guy probably stunk to high heaven - at least in the asylum they cleaned him up a little, but left on his own he probably smelled like a homeless guy, like you could probably tell that he entered a room before you saw him!
And this points out a dramatic failing of most movies - since cinema is a primarily visual and auditory medium, how often are we the audience not getting the full understanding of events because we're unable to smell them? Yet all attempts to rectify this situation, with Odorama and scratch-and-sniff cards, have been treated as novelties or jokes. We're not going to get close to VR unless smell, one of our most powerful, memory-evoking senses, becomes part of the picture. How bad did Van Gogh smell? What, exactly, did he smell like? Some combination of turpentine, wet funky soil, moldy cheese and regurgitated absinthe? Just speculating...
This is why I think I've been doing myself a disservice, because when I go to the movie theater - usually between 5 and 10 times a year, I always get the same thing - large popcorn with butter and a large Coke. The concession stand at my usual haunt also sells pizza, chicken wings and other items, so have I been doing this wrong? Should I be doing more to match my food consumed during the movie with the actions depicted on screen? I know that the more upscale (hipster) theaters, like the Nitehawk in Brooklyn, offer not only unique food items but also alcoholic beverages that are tailored to the time periods of each film, or their ingredients riff off each film's title or subject matter in some way.
So perhaps I missed my calling - with my love of movies and my knowledge of food, maybe I should be the one deciding what people should eat to pair with each movie that they watch. OK, here goes - for "At Eternity's Gate", I recommend "At Eternity's Cheese Plate", which would be some fancy crackers, maybe a small bunch of grapes, and a couple of nice French cheeses, like a Brie and a spreadable Boursin. By all means, take a picture of it first or maybe make an oil painting. Pair it with a nice white wine, but damn, I'm not really a wine expert. Maybe some absinthe, if you're game?
Also starring Rupert Friend (last seen in "The Zero Theorem"), Mads Mikkelsen (last seen in "Doctor Strange"), Mathieu Amalric (last seen in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"), Emmanuelle Seigner (ditto), Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Niels Arestrup (last seen in "By the Sea"), Vladimir Consigny, Amira Casar (last seen in "Sylvia"), Vincent Perez, Alexis Michalik, Stella Schnabel, Lolita Chammah, Didier Jarre, and the voice of Louis Garrel.
RATING: 5 out of 10 self-portraits
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