IMDb listing
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review
At Eternity's Gate [2018] (directed and cowritten by Julian Schnabel along with Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg) tells the story, again, of tormented impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh [wikip] [IMDb] (played in the current film quite admirably by Willem Dafoe).
Why would an artist who _never_ sold even one of his paintings during his life time, who clearly was tormented (he _cut off his ear_ for God's sake in apparently a terribly misguided expression of ... unrequited love) and who arguably committed suicide (though he could have even flubbed that up ... being killed instead by simply random petty thieves) BE SO FASCINATING TO SO MANY PEOPLE (US) TODAY? Exactly ;-)
It would seem that Vincent Van Gogh was an archeotypical supremely talented but tormented, misunderstood ... LOSER ;-).
It would seem that his legacy embodies fundamental fears that many of us have of "never being able to make our mark" (though somehow we'd feel entitled to make said mark ;-). And yes, like Franz Kafka (another tormented soul, never really appreciated in his lifetime) he's been vindicated -- IN SPADES (!) -- since his death, more than a century ago (!). TODAY we look at his pictures, so many of them SO FAMOUS _now_ and wonder "how it it possible that people didn't see his genius while he was alive?"
SO ... quiet loser in his life time (and again Willem Dafoe plays him really, really well) ... he embodies a hope that "one day" those who don't understand us ... will.
Honestly, GREAT introspective / tormented, and dare one say _impressionistic_ film ;-).
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