Video review: "At Eternity's Gate"

A lot of people were surprised when Willem Dafoe earned an Oscar nomination for “At Eternity’s Gate,” a tiny art film about the last days of painter Vincent van Gogh. But for those lucky few who’ve seen the movie, they know the accolade is well-deserved indeed.

Previous cinematic portraitures of van Gogh have focused on his turbulent life, especially his relationships with his brother, Theo, and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. And, of course, there’s the infamous time he cut off his own ear.

What “Gate” brings to the mix is indelibly linking van Gogh’s mental instability with his art. Director Julian Schnabel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Louise Kugelberg and Jean-Claude Carrière, include lots of examinations of his paintings, including less famous ones like the one from which the movie takes its title, “Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate).”

The camera follows van Gogh around the countryside as he looks for scenes to capture, seeing the world through his eyes.  Dafoe portrays him as a woman for whom painting is his whole life, because he’s disturbed and thrilled by what he sees and wants to share it with everyone.

It portrays the ear incident and its aftermath, but as simply one more step along the unstable path he trod, instead of a fetishistic totem of self-hatred.

Gorgeous, haunting and insightful, “At Eternity’s Gate” is a harrowing portrait of a mad who embraced both beauty and madness, and joined the two on canvas.

There’s a tendency for small video releases like this to have very skimpy bonus features, but this one is the pleasing exception. There’s a feature-length audio track by Schnabel and Kugelberg (who also edited the film), and three making-of documentary shorts: “Made by a Painter,” “Channeling Van Gogh” and “Vision of Van Gogh.”

Movie:



Extras:

Review: "At Eternity's Gate"

When Willem Dafoe was still young, there was something about him that seemed quite ancient. Now that he’s older, he retains an eerie vitality that allows him to effortlessly play a man three decades younger than himself.

Many say the art of Vincent van Gogh is similar ageless.

Here was a man quite literally obsessed with his work, and yet he only sold a single painting during his short lifetime. “At Eternity’s Gate” is a chronicle of his last, lonely days living in the tiny villages of Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, where he cranked out an astonishing body of work that will live on in immortality.

I’ll confess, at first I was put off by yet another film about van Gogh. Just last year we had “Loving Vincent,” an Oscar-nominated animated movie that used imagery by modern painters to relate the story.

And yet I found “At Eternity’s Gate” to be a breath of fresh air. Dafoe gives a transformative performance as the artist, depicting a man as wrapped up by his own demons as his desire to share his vision of how he sees the world.

Rather than portraying von Gogh as a man who made great art despite his mental instability, director Julian Schnabel, who co-wrote the script with Louise Kugelberg and Jean-Claude Carrière, shows them as inextricably entwined.

Dafoe’s lean, rawboned face turns out to be a surprisingly good match for the features shown in van Gogh’s various self-portraits. The photography by Benoît Delhomme is stunning, with many wordless passages of him just wandering around the French countryside, feeling inspired and feverishly getting it down on canvass.

Rupert Friend plays his brother, Theo, who supports him financially and, on the rare occasions when they’re in the same place, emotionally. They have a very tender moment where Theo comes to the asylum where Vincent has been committed, and cuddles him just as they did on cold nights as boys.

Oscar Isaac makes an impression as fellow painter and friend Paul Gauguin, who is angry and confident to van Gogh’s placid timidity. Both struggled to establish themselves in the face of Impressionism, but while van Gogh wanted to evolve from it and create a new form painting builton what he called “sunshine,” Gauguin rejected the old masters entirely. (Though he concedes Monet is “not bad.”)

Mads Mikkelsen and Mathieu Amalric play, respectively, a priest who struggles to reconcile van Gogh’s faith in God with paintings he considers to be ugly and disturbing, and Dr. Paul Gachet, one of van Gogh’s doctors and the subject of one of his most famous paintings.

The film’s title comes from one of van Gogh’s lesser-known works (if there is such a thing), “Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate).” Van Gogh speaks about his love for painting nature, musing that while flowers may fade and wilt, his capturing of them in paint will live on -- or at least have a chance to.

I liked how the film handled van Gogh’s infamous ear cutting. Rather than fetishizing the incident, Schnabel treats it as just one more episode for a man who struggled to reconcile the real world with the disparate, chaotic one he experienced in his mind. After the incident, the director depicts it by just having Dafoe’s head turned away from that side.

Lovely and insightful, “At Eternity’s Gate” celebrates the art of Vincent van Gogh without trying to obscure the madness and genius of the man behind it.

Review: "A Simple Favor"

"A Simple Favor" is not a particularly good film, but it is an interesting one. Sometimes it's better to to be mediocre and interesting than decently unoriginal.

At first I thought this was going to be a romcom. Anna Kendrick plays a mommy vlogger who becomes ensorceled with a beautiful, bitchy mother of one of her son's 1st grade classmates, played by Blake Lively. I figured it would be an odd couple romp as they bond while dealing with various man issues.

There is indeed bonding and romantic entanglements, but they're a sideshow to what is essentially a comedy whodunit.

Tonally, this is a brash outlier movie. Coming from director Paul Feig ("Bridesmaids," "Spy), it appears at first blush to be a broad R-rated comedy with the ladies spouting a lot of filthy talk. I haven't read the book it's based on, though it's been compared to "Gone Girl" and "The Girl on the Train" -- pretty much the polar opposite of funny.

But screenwriter Jessica Sharzer, adapting the novel by Darcey Bell, layers in plenty of laughs even as she introduces film noir elements as the two women trade roles as admirer and admired, pursuer and pursued. There are a couple of head-whipping plot twists, though they aren't hard to guess if you've been paying attention.

It starts out fun and flirty, then turns darker, and then darker still, though there are still laughs spliced in between the doom and gloom.

Kendrick plays Stephanie Smothers, a widowed single mom to adorable Miles (Joshua Satine) who makes helpful videos aimed at other mothers. She's sort of a downmarket Martha Stewart, living in quaint (fictional) Warfield, Conn., a New York City exurb. The other moms of their class see her as this busy bee of energy, friendly to everyone but close to no one.

Then she meets the mom of Miles' pal Nicky (Ian Ho), the class troublemaker. Emily Nelson (Lively) is everything Stephanie is not -- tall, flawless, rich, self-confident, careerist and seemingly indifferent to the joys of motherhood. She wears swank suits with vest pocket chains, fedora hats, ladybug shoes and a permanent smirk.

After some play dates and lots of gin martinis, they're soon fast friends. Stephanie is deferential and apologetic, and Emily acts as her muse and mentor to live larger. Emily is like a caricature of feminism: controlling, manipulative, arrogant. We would hope Stephanie would be smart enough to see through her facade to the depth of her problems, but then we wouldn't have a movie.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that Emily suddenly disappears after leaving Nicky with Stephanie. Her husband, Sean (Henry Golding), a once-promising writer, was away in London and wasn't aware she vamoosed. Her posh clothing designer boss (Rupert Friend) though she was on a business trip in Miami.

Soon the police are brought in, Stephanie's vlog becomes a hit when she starts doing updates on Emily's case in between making friendship bracelets, and the web of suspicions quickly spreads.

There was a point about two-thirds of the way through the movie where I was literally scratching my head, wondering what the heck was going on and where the film was heading. It felt schizophrenic and weird. But it was also on some level enervating to watch a movie that keeps throwing wild haymakers at you. Many of them don't land, but some do.

I can't exactly recommend "A Simple Favor." But it's a sporadically entertaining flick that has something to say about the state of the mommy wars.

Review: "The Young Victoria"

Many people consider period costume dramas to be stuffy and rigid. The wonderful, vibrant "The Young Victoria" should perforate those preconceptions.

This gripping tale of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne of England is a full-blooded portrait of a young woman of passion and intellectual firepower, who held onto her authority despite myriad attempts by the existing patriarchy to wrest it away and make her a puppet.

Emily Blunt, who at age 26 has crackled in numerous supporting roles like "The Devil Wears Prada," leaps to the fore of her generation to join peers like Keira Knightley and Anne Hathaway. Her performance as Victoria is subtle and layered -- not to mention quite passionate, belying the name of a queen that begat an adjective, Victorian, synonymous with repressed sexuality.

The story opens with Victoria age 17, heir-apparent of her uncle King William (Jim Broadbent) but living under the stern yoke of her mother the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her consort, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong, imposing and impressive).

The pair intentionally designed every aspect of her life since girlhood to render Victoria weak and dependent upon them, so they can establish a regency and rule in her stead. They even created a set of rules, the Kensington System, in which the princess was never left unattended, even forced to have an adult hold her hand while she ascended the palace stairs.

Inexperienced but willful, Victoria bides her time until her 18th birthday and the last sands run out on the ailing monarch's reign. It's fascinating to watch the various powers maneuver to align themselves this way and that in preparation for the coming transfer of royal authority.

For example, Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany), the leader of the current government, slyly ingratiates himself as Victoria's secretary, when his real ambitions are to secure power for his own political party. This extends even to the appointment of the new queen's ladies-in-waiting; she sets off a scandal early in her monarchy when she refuses to add a few members loyal to the opposing faction to her staff.

Things are especially delicate when it comes to marriage. Victoria's other uncle, King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann), has trained young Prince Albert to woo Victoria, in hopes of using that influence to get England to assist him in European affairs. Leopold at one point becomes frustrated that Albert hasn't yet infiltrated the young queen's bed.

"You are the next piece in the game," he tells Albert.

Despite being played like a pawn, Albert finds himself genuinely drawn to Victoria, even confiding in her at their first meeting the purpose for which he has been sent. Albert is played by Rupert Friend, another young actor (who bears an astonishing resemblance to Orlando Bloom) with a budding resume.

The film's primary delight is in watching Victoria and Albert, who were both raised to be creatures beholden to others, form a long-distance bond kept alive primarily through letters. Their partnership allowed them to shirk aside the manipulations of various selfish parties and set their own course.

Director Jean-Marc Valée and screenwriter Julian Fellowes take a few liberties with the historical record -- for example, using an assassination attempt on the queen for dramatic effect (in actuality, neither of them was hurt).

But in delivering such a deliciously hearty, fervent take on life beneath the crowns and powdered wigs, "The Young Victoria" can be forgiven for eschewing a dry recitation of history.

3.5 stars