At Eternity’s Gate

Julian Schnabel, the director of, among other films,  Basquiat and  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, confirms his reputation as an expert in evading the conventions of biopics. In  At Eternity’s Gate, the director sees in Van Gogh much more than an obsessed madman. The Dutch painter (Willem Dafoe, a deserving award winner at the Venice Festival) comes across as a sensitive melancholic with a first-class sense of humor. The instinctive sympathy that we feel toward Van Gogh allows us to take to heart all the more the situation facing an artist prevented by unjust fate from experiencing fame during his lifetime. The silent, contemplative nature of the film is made even more profound by the masterful cinematography. Instead of dazzling viewers with spectacular panoramas of the landscapes painted by the protagonist, Schnabel, in tandem with cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, preferred to use close-ups depicting the artist at work. The actors perform wonderfully in the film’s intimate atmosphere. In addition to the aforementioned Dafoe, Oscar Isaac is brilliant as Paul Gauguin, and Mads Mikkelsen appears as a priest who is a friend of Van Gogh’s.