“I’ll show what I see to my human brothers who can’t see it.” Julian Schnabel‘s “At Eternity‘s Gate” is something of a test for the filmmaker. The director behind “The Diving Bell And The Butterfly” needs another success after the critical and commercial disappointment of his previous film “Miral.” If his latest, a biopic charting the last days of Vincent Van Gogh (Willem Dafoe), is as successful as it looks, Schnabel could see himself into awards conversations.
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If premiering at the Venice Film Festival or being selected as the Closing Night film at the New York Festival isn’t promising enough, the first footage of “At Eternity’s Gate” looks to have all the visual marvel one might expect from a biopic about one of the greatest painters to ever live. That’s not to mention Willem Dafoe’s powerful embodiment of Van Gogh.
Dafoe looks to be imbuing his iteration of the famous painter with a bursting passion for the work. “I need to be in a fever state. It’s called ‘the act of painting’ for a reason!” he exclaims to his contemporary, Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), a fellow post-Impressionist painter. Dafoe manifests Van Gogh’s rationale for painting, a seemingly holy quest to deliver hope to his fellow man as spoken about in the second clip, in a building frenzy of agitated energy. The agitation stimulates him and, in turn, encourages the art.
Shot by Benoît Delhomme (“A Most Wanted Man,” “Lawless“), the cinematography displays a sense of movement in congruence with Van Gogh’s energy. When calmly monologuing about why he paints, Van Gogh is framed at the center by a static camera. Yet, when he’s building to his necessary fever state, Delhomme’s camera floats and shakes with Van Gogh’s increasingly distraught movement. The photography looks expectedly lush, but the varying kineticism of the footage is surprising and seems to add another dynamic to the storytelling.
“At Eternity’s Gate” premieres at Venice on September 3 and will be shown as the Closing Night film at NYFF on October 12. Its regular theatrical release is a few days later on November 16.
Check out all our coverage from the 2018 Venice Film Festival here.