… official trailer for At Eternity’s Gate, a biography movie starring Willem Dafoe, Oscar Isaac and Mads Mikkelsen. In theaters November 16, 2018.Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate is a journey inside the world and mind of a person who, despite skepticism, ridicule and illness, created some of the world’s most beloved and stunning works of art. This is not a forensic biography, but rather scenes based on Vincent van Gogh’s (Academy Award® Nominee Willem Dafoe) letters, common agreement about events in his life that present as facts, hearsay, and moments that are just plain invented.
Willem Dafoe gives a ‘magnificent performance’ as the troubled Van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s ‘gloriously artistic’ film. (BBC Film Review, By Caryn James)
…The episodes about Van Gogh’s death are problematic. The film shows him not committing suicide, as is commonly thought, but being shot by two local boys, one of them dressed as Buffalo Bill. And as the film progresses, Schnabel emphasises Van Gogh’s near-mystic visions. The film doesn’t decide whether they were the source of his artistic genius, or symptoms of illness, or both, but leans toward the ‘mad genius’ definition of the artist. When Van Gogh says on his deathbed, “Don’t blame anyone,” he becomes Christ-like, a choice that threatens to reduce a richly defined character to a one-dimensional saint.There is no need to share Schnabel’s interpretation, though. Agree with him or not, he allows viewers to experience the mystery of creativity in this gloriously artistic film.
