SummaryAt Eternity’s Gate is a journey inside the world and mind of a person who, despite skepticism, ridicule and illness, created some of the world’s most beloved and stunning works of art. This is not a forensic biography, but rather scenes based on Vincent van Gogh’s (Willem Dafoe) letters, common agreement about events in his life that pre...
SummaryAt Eternity’s Gate is a journey inside the world and mind of a person who, despite skepticism, ridicule and illness, created some of the world’s most beloved and stunning works of art. This is not a forensic biography, but rather scenes based on Vincent van Gogh’s (Willem Dafoe) letters, common agreement about events in his life that pre...
I’m not a fan of Schnabel’s paintings, but I think he’s a born film painter, and even if At Eternity’s Gate doesn’t reliably cross the blood-brain barrier, his frames are like no one else’s. (His cinematographer is Benoît Delhomme.)
Despite a strong, affecting performance by Willem Dafoe – who, even more than Kirk Douglas or Pialat’s star Jacques Dutronc, looks born to the part – the director’s pugnacious visual and editing style never impart the kinetic emotional charge of his 2007 drama The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
The point with van Gogh is that he produced mind-boggling art while stricken with doubt that he’d failed all his life. This film is his spiritual antithesis – so recklessly confident that it paints right over him.
At Eternity's Gate is more like an early concept for Loving Vincent than a movie, a boring storytelling was the big problem in the movie, but thanks to Dafoe great perfomance and good ending, the movie is not completely awful, At Eternity's Gate is basically a theory movie whether Van Gogh shoot himself or got killed, and the one that lived a very long one is that Van Gogh shoot himself, At Eternity's Gate try the second version of it, and the result is? i'm not interested at all.
it was a great opportunity to learn life of Vincent Van **** was rejected many **** worked very **** visited museum in order to learn how other great artist **** lost his **** this film,Gogh struggled with his **** you want to be a great painter, you can learn a lot of good things from his life.
I went on Friday (Sydney time) to see this movie. I enjoy seeing historically based movies, even if they are not 100% factually accurate as such (i.e. the age of the real Van Gough was much younger than portrayed by the actor). I only stayed for about 30 to 40 minutes because I found the camera work very disturbing. It appeared to be held by hand and had a very jilted, moving all other the place impact. I started to feel as if I was at sea or something like motion sickness so had to leave. Hope nobody else experiences this, but it wasn't worth staying to see the end.
After the first 10 minutes I was ready to walk out of “At Eternity’s Gate” and I was waiting for Allen to say that we should leave but he didn’t. Talk about walking—if they cut all the scenes showing van Gogh walking, especially those of just from lower shins down, in silence, well except for excruciating music on the soundtrack, this would have been considered a short. Sixty-two years ago (1956) there was a ‘Hollywood’ version called “Lust For Life” starring Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gogh for which he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and Anthony Quinn as Paul Gauguin who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The movie was based on a story by Irving Stone and written by Norman Corwin and this movie is written by Jean Claude Carrierre, Louise Kugelberg and Julian Schnabel, the latter also directing with it being his version, based on fact, letters, speculation and fiction.
The major plus of both films is showing the authentic paintings of Vincent van Gogh and, to a certain degree, his road to insanity. Did van Gogh kill himself by shooting himself in the stomach as Stone says or did 2 kids shoot and kill him?
The scenes between Douglas and Quinn are electric while the scenes in “At Eternity’s Gate” between Rupert Friend, as Theo, Vincent’s brother, especially one in a hospital, are moving and those between Oscar Isaac, as Gauguin, showing the respect he had for van Gogh, enlightening. Vladimir Consigny as a young doctor shows compassion for the man who sits before him after cutting his ear off while Mads Mikkelsen as a priest who is no match for van Gogh’s interpretation of the bible. The women’s roles are secondary and neither add or take away from the film.
William Dafoe, as van Gogh, in his 60s, playing the latter in his 30s, shows more in his face of the pain of life that the artist probably did.
Sadly the performances of Dafoe and Friend, with the paintings of van Gogh, are not enough to make the picture worthwhile while the offbeat piano tinkering of music by Tatiana Lisovskaya, the endless walking scenes, the handheld camera shots and the lack of drama make this more of a ‘skip it’ than a ‘must see’.