There is a certain romantic notion to fleeing from society. It is one that artists (of the more literal variety, mind you–none of this graphic design bullshit) have fetishized and employed for centuries, among two of the most prime examples being Paul Gaugin and Vincent Van Gogh, two men whose lives intersect irrevocably in Julian Schnabel’s sixth film, At Eternity’s Gate. That Schnabel is an artist himself–and one whose debut feature was another biopic about a fellow artist of his own time, Jean-Michel Basquiat–is of no little significance to the nature of the film, which obviously must set itself apart from the many filmic offerings on Van Gogh, including the recently released Loving Vincent.
In some ways likenable to another of Schnabel’s great biopics, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, there is an extreme subjectivity to the narrative form of At Eternity’s Gate–from the constant playbacks of dialogue in Vincent’s (unexpectedly the role Willem Dafoe was born to play) mind to the discolored bottom half of the screen we see increase as Van Gogh’s mental state seems to become evermore fractured in his quest to capture what he sees in his mind’s eye from the source material of omnipresent nature. For it is nature and nature alone that serves as his raison d’être, his sole passion to be amid the natural world. Some might even argue he was the original transcendentalist. It is, in point of fact, his fellow degenerate in painting, Paul Gaugin (Oscar Isaac), who encourages him to trust his instinct to “find a new light” with the advice, “Go south.” Taking Gaugin’s advice to heart, Van Gogh retreats from the overly “making the scene”-oriented Paris (those damned self-satisfied Impressionists and all) to do just that.
With the help of the sort of patron we should all be so lucky to have, his brother, Theo (Rupert Friend, whose last name is almost as tailor-made for this role as Allen Leech’s in Bohemian Rhapsody), Van Gogh is able to rent a room (the one famously painted in “Bedroom in Arles”) and live the only way he knows how: by painting. His crazed, fevered manner to capture everything as he sees it in the moment is consistently misunderstood for a combination of carelessness and madness (“Maybe art cannot be great unless there is a streak of madness in it,” he tells his beloved doctor, Paul Gachet ([Mathieu Amalric]). He is routinely looked upon as a proverbial “crazy old coot,” a depraved soul merely indulged in the delusion of being an artist as a result of his brother’s kindness. So, yes, of course, every now and again this type of negative energy can’t help but affect the already tortured spirit of Van Gogh, lending itself to crippling self-doubt and self-loathing as he is asked repeatedly why he believes himself to be a painter.
One scene in particular, after he’s been relegated to a madhouse in Saint-Rémy, finds a local priest (Mads Mikkelsen) to be the person in charge of deciding whether or not he’s “well enough” to re-enter “society,” probing him for the reasons why he thinks he’s an artist, stating, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings but…this is not pleasant.” He says this while showing Van Gogh one of his darker landscapes with rabbits in the foreground (appropriately called “Landscape With Rabbits”). Van Gogh, still ever the spiritual man despite all evidence to the contrary returns, “Why would God give me a gift to paint terrible things?” He then postulates that perhaps his gift was meant to be appreciated in a different time, a future time. To answer the priest’s question about why he is of the firm conviction that he is a painter, Van Gogh asserts, “Because it’s all I can do. And believe me, I’ve tried to do other things.” Among those “other things” were his stint as an art dealer (something Theo would persist in for his own career), minister and bookseller. In the first role, Van Gogh was initially somewhat happy, a transfer to London finding him in the unfortunate position of becoming love-crazed over his landlady’s daughter, Eugénie Loyer, who naturally rebuffed him and was engaged to someone else anyway. It was possibly this first major heartache that colored the tortured aesthetic of Van Gogh’s work, wanting something he could never have being a theme universal in the condition of being human. What’s more, it could likely have established Van Gogh’s seeming monk-like existence, ostensibly celibate in between painting and disappearing into the dark corners of his mind (particularly after enough drinking).
These other professions are scenes we never see come to life on the screen in Schnabel’s rendering of his life as they are, in truth, not important. Van Gogh was painting and nothing else. Well, other than these aforementioned blackouts, which Schnabel captures simply with a black screen and a voiceover after the “incident” that Van Gogh has no recollection of, giving the viewer a similar state of confusion over what might have happened after the scene is cut.
That Schnabel has found himself tasked with the always cumbersome job of depicting Van Gogh’s later years, much of which can only be pieced together from speculation (particularly with regard to his “suicide”), is all too telling of his own empathy for the quintessential tortured artist, who did not sell a single painting in his lifetime. Schnabel can undeniably relate in his own way, recently stating in an interview in promotion of the film and of his massive painting-filled apartment in the West Village, “If I don’t sell [my paintings], I can keep looking at them, and maybe learn something from them.” If nothing else, he has certainly learned how to string together the richest and most fantastical visuals in film format.
Not to mention how to imbue these famous painters with lines they might have likely said (sort of like Lee Israel in her forgeries of literary titans). For instance, Gaugin saying, “These people are wicked and ignorant” of the Arles locals that daily serve to make Van Gogh feel even madder than he might be. So it is that one must wonder, was he really all that crazy, or was Arles just that dull in terms of repackaging every “off-color” action into a mark of insanity? Then again, could it have been so mundane as to warrant cutting off an ear to (ear)drum things up? This iconic act is, in fact, portrayed as Van Gogh’s combination of wanting to cut the evil presence he feels encircling him and as a response to Gaugin’s announcement that he plans to return to Paris to bask in his newfound success as a lauded painter.
Hurt not only by the loss of his only companion and source of intelligent conversation, Van Gogh is also likely wounded by his continued lack of acceptance within the artistic community. Thus, he lets the darkness envelop him further, eventually finding himself seated on the terrace with that priest, a situation he likens to the meeting between Pilate and Jesus during which the former must decide if the latter (also totally unknown in his lifetime) must be condemned to crucifixion or not. Though Pilate does not believe he should be punished, the crowd’s vitriol for Jesus proves too influential on Pilate’s final decision. While this might fall under the standard white male artist’s practice of wallowing in delusions of grandeur by comparing himself to Jesus, Van Gogh reveals a rare case of self-assurance in his own talent even in the face of being at rock bottom with regard to public opinion and outrage.
As he confidently phrases it to the priest, it is through his work that: “I can make people feel what it’s like to be alive.” The priest curiously inquires, “Do you believe they’re not alive?” He replies, “No.” And so, maybe, once again, through Schnabel’s own unique resuscitation of a story that can always be retold in a new way, Van Gogh can remind us what it is to be alive: the agony and the ecstasy, the extreme highs and the terrifying lows that are all part of this strange, horrible and majestic journey toward an inevitable demise.
