AT ETERNITY’S GATE – Review

Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s AT ETERNITY’S GATE.
Photo credit: Lily Gavin

Willem Dafoe gives an amazing performance as Vincent Van Gogh is Julian Schnabel’s impressionistic biopic AT ETERNITY’S GATE. Schnabel ‘s beautifully-shot film is presented from the viewpoint of the artist, and makes a perfect companion to the earlier animated film LOVING VINCENT,which told the artist’s story told from the viewpoint of someone trying to understand him and is presented through animated oil-painted recreations of his works.

Director/co-writer Schnabel based AT ETERNITY’S GATE on Vincent Van Gogh’s letters, commonly agreed on events from his life, and rumors, but then invented or improvised scenes, to create a sense of the artist at work in his productive but troubled later life. The film suggests the life of Vincent Van Gogh rather than being a straight-forward biography, and focuses more on his art and the process of painting than on familiar events. The director describes the film as being “about what it is to be an artist.” Schnabel, a painter himself, is just the director to explore that.

It is also a more sympathetic film that most on the artist, one that avoids wallowing in the “mad genius” theme in favor of concentrating on the astonishing number of masterpiece paintings Van Gogh was able to produce despite his failing mental health. His mental health issues are shown more as the obstacle to his work than the source of it, although there is a little nod to the idea that his mental state may have helped free his perceptions from restraints.

Watching AT ETERNITY’S GATE is often like being in Van Gogh’s paintings, although less literally than in than the animated LOVING VINCENT. Using a hand held camera, Schnabel takes us through an impressionistic version of Van Gogh’s years in the south of France. The film is largely from the artist’s point of view, and is seen in a disjointed, emotional fashion that represents both his fragile mental state and his compulsion and joy in painting. The film is anything but straight-forward and seems as impressionistic as his paintings. Events are seen through the artist’s eyes, often hazy, sometimes are confusing or upsetting, occasionally even inappropriate. We are both moved by the artist’s emotional pain and comprehend the misunderstanding and even negative reaction he produced in some townspeople.

The most riveting thing about this film is Dafoe’s outstanding performance. Dafoe finds a resemblance to Van Gogh that is striking in this film, most notable in several shots recreating Van Gogh’s his self portraits, despite the actor,in his 60s, being much older than Van Gogh, who died at age 37. The film’s excellent supporting cast includes Rupert Friend as Vincent’s supportive art dealer brother Theo, Oscar Isaac as fellow artist and friend Paul Gauguin. Mathieu Amalric appears as Vincent’s friend Dr. Paul Gachet and Mads Mikkelsen plays a pivot role as a priest at an asylum, while Emmanuelle Seigner plays another friend, Madame Ginoux.

The film is filled with gorgeous photography by director of photography Benoît Delhomme, depicting the artist in the midst of creating famous works. We see scenes in rooms where famous works hang on the walls, in locations familiar to us from those paintings and faces in poses familiar from his paintings, including self-portraits.

We see several scenes of a solitary Dafoe walking, even climbing over the landscape, with his easel, brushes, and paints in a pack on his back, like a metaphor of the artist’s struggles to create his art. Schnabel has Dafoe’s Van Gogh painting in the outdoors, battling wind and cold. The film has several scenes where Dafoe actually paints, partly recreating some of the artist’s less familiar works, as the director’s attempt to evoke the moment of artistic creation. It is a noble impulse but not always an effective technique. Dafoe does much better portraying Van Gogh discussing his art and why he paints.

When Dafoe as the artist speaks about his work, we get wonderful discussions or monologues on his drive to paint, about the intentions of his work, or his earlier failure as a cleric and his difficulty with people. The film gives us a sense of both the devotion he engendered in those who support him, and the public misunderstanding of both the artist as a person and his work. The film touches on his lack of financial success, and his mysterious death but avoids other well-known moments. All the familiar elements of his later life are present, but presented in a unique and unconventional manner.

This film sometimes hearkens back to Schnabel’s THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, but this one is not purely POV. Mostly we get Van Gogh’s view of events, but we also get sympathetic insights into those around him, especially his devoted brother Theo and his friend and fellow artist Gauguin. Overall, Van Gogh comes across as a sort of spiritual being, furiously cranking out masterpieces while lingering on the “eternity’s gate” of the title. At one point, the artist speculates if God meant for him to be born ahead of his time.

What a magical film this is for those who love Van Gogh’s work. Instead of presenting his mental fragility as the central aspect of the artist, the focus is on his work ethic, on his drive to paint great masterpieces, with his mental health struggles as something Van Gogh fights through in order to do what he must – which is paint. It is a stirring and sterling homage to the artist who created so many remarkable works in such a brief life.

AT ETERNITY’S GATE opens Wednesday, Nov. 21, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars