"Eternity" makes no attempt to give answers, frustrating critics from Screen Daily, who complained that it "offers little excitement or fresh insight," and Slant, who called it a "disappointingly self-indulgent exercise." But the ambiguity was precisely what drew Dafoe, who some awards prognosticators believe will earn his fourth Oscar nomination for the role (he was up last year for "The Florida Project") – if voters aren't turned off by the drama's lethargic pace and hyper-stylized look. It also mythologizes the art icon with more mysteries: Did he really cut off his own ear because of frightening hallucinations, or was it to win back an old friend, painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac)? And did he actually shoot and kill himself, or was he attacked and murdered by teenage boys while painting outdoors?
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The movie poses lofty questions about nature, beauty, religion and legacy, with van Gogh himself suggesting that "God made me a painter for people who aren't born yet" in a standout scene with an inquisitive priest (Mads Mikkelsen). Schnabel frequently employs vibrant colors, shaky handheld camera and half-blurred frames, creating a dream-like world reminiscent of one of van Gogh's paintings. Much of the nearly two-hour film is dialogue-free, instead relying on voiceovers and tight close-ups of Dafoe's sharp, weathered face to clue audiences in on where his character is at emotionally and mentally. It helps that "Eternity" is less a straightforward biopic of the Dutch painter than it is a surrealist portrait of his final years, spent in and out of mental hospitals while creating some of his most famous works.
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"I never thought of using another actor," Schnabel told Esquire earlier this month. It's a question that fans of art and film have been asking on social media ever since "At Eternity's Gate," which closed out New York Film Festival over the weekend, was announced last year.īut according to director Julian Schnabel, who was Oscar-nominated 10 years ago for his French-language drama "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," there was no one else but Dafoe who could play the famously tortured artist. So why is he playing the painter in a new movie? His help and the will to teach me the key elements of painting was crucial to give a deeper reading to my gestures, whether they were simple brush strokes or more complex ones.NEW YORK – Vincent van Gogh was 37 when he died Willem Dafoe is 63. So I needed Julian, my old friend with whom I love to spend time with. Willem Dafoe: “The most important thing, beyond the preparation by reading the letters, a biography and studying at best as we could, was the idea that I was supposed to paint. We mixed our version of the truth with the actual truth like most people do every day.”
I have been a painter since I was a child, so I think I could have guessed this better than others, in any case, this was our entry into the life of Van Gogh. So in the film, we created sketches and conversations about what could have happened back then. In a museum you can stop, look at a picture, absorb its emotions and then move on to another, in the end, you have to build up an entire exhibition. Julian Schnabel: “While the writer Jean-Claude Carrière and I were at an exhibition of paintings by Van Gogh at the Orsay, alone in the rooms, we had an idea: to try and give the experience of watching a work of art. Besides him, we find Rupert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Mads Mikkelsen, Amalric Mathieu and Emmanuelle Seigner. To go through the last years of Van Gogh, we find an excellent Willem Dafoe, who, despite being almost twice older than his character, manages to express all his thoughts, doubts and emotions.
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Who can best understand a painter but another painter? At the direction of “At Eternity’s Gate” we find Julian Schnabel who, in 1996, already dedicated one of his films to an artist with his “ Basquiat.” As a director who knows how to be sweet and poetic, as well as straightforward and capable of dealing with difficult topics, Schnabel has reached his peak with that little masterpiece of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” and here reiterates his poetic but also unconventional eye: in this film the camera looks almost alive, passing from the first person to a two-shot to the third person, with rare fixed shots, horizontal shots and many colored or distorted filters.
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