The life of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh is
brought to the screen by French director Maurice
Pialat in his 1991 film simply titled Van Gogh.
Unlike Vincente Minneli’s Lust for Life which
dramatized key events in the artist’s life,
Pialat’s film is limited to the last sixty nine
days of Van Gogh’s life. It is a fictional film
based on the director’s impressions of what van
Gogh’s last days might have been like given his
creative output. Unlike the histrionics of Lust
for Life, Pialat, a painter himself for twenty
years before he turned to filmmaking, disdains
sensationalism, showing Vincent as a lonely and
tormented artist who had severe mood swings,
ranging from kindness to roaring anger and
jealousy but one who was fully capable of social
and sexual interaction with others.
Pialat defends his conception by saying simply,
"One doesn't produce 100 masterpieces in a state
of depression--van Gogh died from having had a
glimpse of happiness." The film is set in
Auvers-sur-Oise where van Gogh recuperated
following a self-inflicted injury to his ear
after an argument with Gaugin in Arles, and
after he was hospitalized at an asylum in
St-Rémy for one year. The film begins with van
Gogh’s arrival in 1890 in Auvers, a town close
to Paris where he is greeted by Dr. Paul Gachet
(Gérard Séty), an art collector and homeopathic
doctor who was contacted by Vincent’s brother
Theo (Bernard le Coq). Remarkably portrayed by
French singer and actor Jacques Dutronc, van
Gogh appears pale and emaciated as he takes a
room at the Ravoux Inn and begins to concentrate
on his work, painting a portrait of Gachet’s
charmingly coquettish teenage daughter,
Marguerite (Alexandre London) who falls for him
although he is twenty years her senior.
Not mentioned in Vincent’s letter to Theo,
Vincent’s relationship with Marguerite may be
fanciful, but as portrayed by London is
convincingly real. Not intending to become a
recluse, van Gogh greets Parisian friends at a
gathering by the river which Gachet organizes to
celebrate the artist’s arrival. It is there he
meets up with Cathy (Elsa Zilberstein), a
prostitute he met at Arles, ensuring a love
triangle that serves to highlight the painter’s
contradictions. As time passes in Auvers,
Vincent’s complicated relationship with his
brother Theo and wife Jo (Corinne Bourdon)
brings out his anger that Theo has only sold one
of his paintings and he has had to rely on his
brother for support, a situation that reinforces
his sense of failure, doubt, and guilt.
In this atmosphere of recrimination in which Jo
berates Theo for his handling of their finances
and Marguerite denounces Vincent as sick, the
painter follows his darkest instincts to commit
a final self-destructive act. With Pialat’s
natural and improvisational style, the film Van
Gogh provides a full and rich experience.
Everything in the film has an authentic look and
feel from the old nineteenth century trains to
the country inns, the blacksmiths and the
farmers. The film is alive with dances and
songs, and the beauty of the surrounding fields
inspires van Gogh to reflect its bright colors
in his work. Many of his famous paintings are
shown, although there is little discussion of
the artist’s technique or creative process.
Praise for the film is displayed in the letter
written to Pialat by Jean-Luc Godard in 1991.
“My dear Maurice,” Godard says, “your film is
astonishing, totally astonishing; far beyond the
cinematographic horizon covered up until now by
our wretched gaze. Your eye is a great heart
that sends the camera hurtling among girls,
boys, spaces, moments in time, and colors, like
childish tantrums. The ensemble is miraculous;
the details, sparks of light within this
miracle; we see the big sky fall and rise from
this poor and simple earth. All of my thanks, to
you and yours, for this success – warm,
incomparable, quivering.
Cordially
yours,
Jean-Luc
Godard.”
A fitting tribute, indeed.
GRADE: A
Howard Schumann
