The film, one notes, has three credited writers. One being the distinguished Jean-Claude Carrière. However, this also might explain the tonal discrepancies in Schnabel’s scattergun movie. The film is at its strongest when the director’s eye is given priority. One can’t help thinking that this should have been an entire lyrical prose poem. Watching Van Gogh stumble through fields like a demented R2D2, slapping paint around like his life depended on it, all of this is great. What isn’t so great are the convoluted dialogues between VG and Gaugin, or the patchy scenes with his brother Theo, or even the haphazard attempts at narrative, much of which seems to be done for the benefit of having another name actor show up in a bit part role. The film smells of money compromise. Even down to the casting of Dafoe, who might look the part, but who feels, instinctively, too old for the part, a sixty year old in the body of a 37 year old. One can see the logic for casting Dafoe, he brings the necessary weight, but there’s something subtly geriatric about his Van Gogh, which doesn’t help. There are moments of lucidity from the director of photography, allied to a scaled back score, which lift the film way above the ordinary biopic, but it never reaches the heights of Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
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