Two movies about the life and death of the troubled painter, Vincent van Gogh, were released in the past two years, and both used a fascinating variety of cinematic techniques to portray the enigmatic figure. Loving Vincent, released in September of 2017, was beautifully animated with oil paintings done in van Gogh’s style. At Eternity’s Gate, released roughly one year later in September 2018, featured Willem Dafoe as van Gogh, and was filmed almost entirely with handheld cameras.
Both focused on van Gogh’s often troubled interactions with the people around him. Loving Vincent was set after his death, as his friends and doctors from his time in Arles, France attempted to unravel the mystery of his death. He was shot in the stomach, but it was unclear for some time whether it was a suicide or a murder. The characters were based directly on van Gogh’s paintings of them, including the innkeeper and the postmaster, as well as a young woman he befriended.
At Eternity’s Gate worked to paint a portrait of van Gogh while he lived. It focused on his descent into mental illness, and illustrated his relationship with his brother, Theo (Rupert Friend), and fellow painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac). The handheld filming style depicted a very intimate portrait of the artist, but was slightly nauseating as the filming was fairly shaky. In addition, many of the shots could and should have been cut down in length by quite a bit. Another critique I would make is that the film occasionally played into the trope that van Gogh was only a talented artist because he was tragic and mentally ill, although, to its credit, the many scenes of van Gogh simply painting helped to offset that narrative by showing him actively practicing his craft. Most important to the film is the fact that Dafoe’s performance was breathtaking, and he brought both a tenderness and a slight wildness to the character.
I watched Loving Vincent first, shortly after it came out, and was blown away by the scale and scope of the production process, as well as the intricacy and accuracy of the paintings with which it was animated. Given its success both artistically and emotionally, I was hesitant going into At Eternity’s Gate, as I worried that the film would either exhaust the subject, fail to hold up to Loving Vincent’s standard, or worse, both. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised and duly impressed. At Eternity’s Gate seemed, in some ways, to be as layered as one of van Gogh’s paintings. Produced by Jon Kilik, it used overlapping sound loops of both dialogue and background noise, as well as blurred filters over parts of some scenes, to add an extra dimension. Both films were masterful and insightful, and opened a window into the life and art of one of the world’s most revered and misunderstood painters.