Director: Maurice Pialat
Starring: Gérard Séty, Jacques Dutronc, Bernard Le Coq
Running time: 158 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: Interviews, Trailers, Documentaries plus a full-colour booklet with exclusive content
Artists can be a temperamental lot, and biopics showcasing the tantalizing lives of the mad, bad and (sometimes) dangerous can be alluring to us mediocrities. Just think of l’enfant terrible of classical music, Mozart, in AMADEUS (1984), POLLOCK’s eponymous sozzled painter (2000) and the quite frankly bonkers Marquis de Sade in QUILLS (2000). Artistry and histrionics seem to go hand in hand – in the movie world at least.
So you might expect a feature charting the final months of troubled artist Vincent van Gogh’s life to be, well…a bit dramatic. After all, he struggled with depression, possible schizophrenia and eventually killed himself aged 37 – plus we all know the story about the ear. Maurice Pialat picks things up when van Gogh heads to a small village outside Paris for some recuperative air and therapy, all under the care of Dr. Gachet (Gérard Séty).
But if you’re looking for sensationalism you’ve come to the wrong place. As far as experiences go, VAN GOGH is more Radio 3 (with a nice cup of Lapsang Souchong) than the National Enquirer. Even a fling with Gachet’s teenage daughter brings no seedy scenes.
Not that it’s a bad thing.
Instead we’re treated to an unhurried and surprisingly calm picture of the painter’s murkiest (but also most productive) days leading up to his supposed suicide (he died from gunshot wounds but a gun was never found) as he battles with a kind of existential crisis – his long dark teatime of the soul. Pialat isn’t interested in lurid scandal (there’s not one ear hacked off). Instead he focusses on the minutiae of van Gogh’s day to day life and his interpersonal relationships and interactions: picnics by the lake and long conversations with his brother Théo (Bernard Le Coq). Jacques Dutronc is convincing as the painter; scare-crow-like and wrapped up in shabby clothes, he has a quiet intensity.
In fact, we actually see very little of what we might expect in a film about an artist – the creative process. So fixated is Pialat on the tiny mundane details, that expected scenes of van Gogh frantically painting are notably absent. The few we’re allowed to see show a snippet of van Gogh’s passion as he jabs the canvas. In a way it’s a type of revisionist art history, muted and grounded in the gaps of van Gogh’s life between the dramatic moments so loved by posterity. Both simplistic and intense, VAN GOGH debunks myths and offers a quietly reflective and intimate glimpse into Vincent’s final descent into madness and death.
Extras: Cinema fans are spoilt by the multitude of extras: deleted scenes, trailer, interviews with cast and crew, documentaries and a full colour 56 page booklet including some of the director’s original artwork (he’s also a painter).
VAN GOGH is released as part of Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema Series on Blu-ray and DVD now.
