At Eternity's Gate

As one might expect of a painter, Julian Schnabel’s take on Vincent is from within the artist. Hence his subjective views of the fields, of the artist walking, of the sun-dappled trees, and the artist’s direct representation as a voice over the empty/full black screen. The shots of Vincent walking in the fields are far longer than the shots of his actually painting, because that art is a journey — as much away from the mundane as into the dense layers of the work.

As Van Gogh says, his painting is a compulsion, his gift from God, what keeps him alive and sane, and a refuge from thinking and disintegrating.

As the title suggests, this is the artist as spiritual seeker. In Van Gogh’s interview wth the  pastor two religious systems collide: the authority’s institutional, mediated experience of the theoretical divine vs the visionary artist’s personal, direct experience of the divine in nature. The pastor finds the painting ugly because its energy is alien to him, as is the direct, unmediated passion of the visionary.  The pastor is only used to the simple surface of nature, not its meaning (for which he prefers The Book).

The full screen shots of the pastor show a wan, subdued landscape. He is sensitive, caring, humane, but unable to fathom Vincent’s alternative dedication and experience. His conventional religion is learned but not sweated out to the point of fainting and hallucinating, as Vincent’s is. 

  In virtually all these scenes of Vincent painting, he works in darkness.The brightness is in his interior vision, his apprehension of the divinity he alone feels connected with. The ”real” sunflowers here are skeletal shadows of the blooms that live ablaze in the art.

      That’s what makes this film a valuable addition to the sub-genre, Van Gogh films, all those imitations of his legendary life. The narrative materials are by now familiar to all. What’s new here is the artist Schnabel’s attempt to articulate and — more importantly — show the springs and fruit of Vincent’s distinctive perception, which was religious as much as aesthetic.