At Eternity's Gate

The last film in my winter break movie marathon was At Eternity's Gate, a tragic portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh's final years starring Willem Dafoe in the title role.  Unlike many traditional biopics which focus on one linear event after another, this film is very episodic.  Van Gogh was inspired by nature so there are many scenes of him walking through the fields of Arles, looking up at the sky with a blissful expression, painting the same tree over and over again, and even rolling around in the dirt to more fully understand its properties.  These scenes are beautifully rendered, often with the camera following Van Gogh closely as wanders through the countryside or from his point of view as he looks at something he wants to paint.  This film explores his madness with disturbing scenes of lashing out at school children for bothering him and physically posing a woman against her will for a painting.  His isolation is also explored and it is heartbreaking whenever he parts from his brother Theo (Rupert Friend), a Paris art dealer who supports him financially, and Paul Gaugin (Oscar Isaac), another painter with whom he argues over technique.  The aspect of this film that I enjoyed the most is his understanding that he sees the world differently from everyone else and that, while contemporary audiences may revile his paintings, he is creating works for people who haven't been born yet.  There is a wonderful scene when Van Gogh is visited by a priest (Mads Mikkelsen) at the asylum and he says that when he paints he touches eternity.  Dafoe gives an incredibly nuanced performance because the Van Gogh that we meet in this film is not necessarily sympathetic but Dafoe makes us feel every bit of his suffering.  While I understand what director Julian Schnabel was going for, namely to make an "artistic" film about art, I sometimes struggled while watching it because of the slow and deliberate pace.  Not everyone is going to enjoy this but it is beautiful and profound.