Vincent and Theo

Director Robert Altman has with this film accomplished something biographers, writers of fiction, art historians and yes, filmmakers, have failed at for so long: to give us a convincing portrayal of painter Vincent Van Gogh's life without falling too deeply into the harmful stereotype of "the mad genius" or trying to explain him away as a severely ill man who happened to have groundbreaking talent.

Both Tim Roth and Paul Rhys give exquisite, painful, but never over the top performances as two men who are intimately linked in a way that suggests something more than mere brotherhood. Outwardly they have very little in common aside from being biologically linked: Theo is an art curator who endures the daily trials of the average man with perhaps a little more poverty; Vincent is an isolated painter who operates from an area of the mind and spirit which allows him no rest and no integration into society.

Tim Roth's Van Gogh is a quietly explosive figure who walks in the avenues of his own unrelenting pain and occasional ecstasy at the revelations he has in the most uncanny situations--drawing a prostitue while defecating, for instance. He is in some ways the opposite of Kirk Douglas' overbearing, sentimental painter who begs the world to understand him. This Van Gogh just doesn't care and sneers at the world unless it really bothers him, and then he lets everyone know how he's feeling in a way that is not to be ignored.

Rhys make Theo as interesting if not more. He is also "somewhere else", and not in the sense of a mere romantic cliche. He is a staid businessman but, like his brother, he is violently unable to reconcile himself to the world around him which is mostly composed of phonies and mediocrities. Throughout all the emotional outburts, all the ferocious fights between the two, there is an elusive thread of understanding that ties the two tightly together.

The scenes in which Vincent paints are not pleasant, as they are in so many other films. His agitation grows throughout the film though Roth plays it with a kind of poker faced approach. The lilies, flowers and all the things he sees so intensely do not bring him pleasure but buzz at him, attack his mind, creating the impossible desire to communicate his vision to others.

When Vincent realizes his "psychologist" is a corrupt, patronizing hack and that he is far too gone to be brought back to reality, his suicide is cold and impulsive. The rest of the movie is like a car crash. Theo cannot live without his brother and can no longer maintain the social fictions that allowed him to make a living before. And his syphillis is beginning to destroy him.

This movie is a masterpiece and will probably be the cinematic last word on the relationship between these two legendary figures in the history of art.

Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters, and the story of his life as we know it has inspired countless generations. Other than Kirk Douglas' tormented portrait in LUST FOR LIFE, I'd never even heard of a film portraying Van Gogh.

Now comes VINCENT AND THEO (more than likely inspired by Leonard Nimoy's famous 1-man play "Theo", all about Theo Van Gogh)--this film is in some ways really ahead of its time. Directed by Robert Altman, released in 1990, Vincent (brilliant Tim Roth) is really quite smart but obviously ill. Theo (a terribly twitchy Paul Rhys) is the madman here.

There was a love/hate thing I felt about that. In real life, Theo was Vincent's reliable rock, his support and his lifeline--to Theo, Vincent was a hero. They loved one another, and Vincent's mystery illness hurt them both. That is all this movie has in common with reality.

Yet the locations, the cinematography...I never thought I'd ever see that world in which Vincent lived. In this film I felt I was really there, really, really, there! The British came close to this recently with a "Dr. Who" episode featuring Vincent, but still!

The soundtrack, though it becomes repetitive, is a miracle. I loved its ominous overture, and it struck me 1/4 of the way through that the music was trying to paint in sound like Vincent painted in oils. It made me so happy to think that, it helped me ignore some of the ugly rough-and-tumble of this film.

If there is one weakness it is the sagging moments. There is no clear need for these, and they seem almost an allergy of Altman's, but here they are and they get uncomfortable. I was able to go to the sandbox and when I returned the film was still on the same darned sagging scene. Lastly, I do not like the restricted time period this covers, nor do I like the fact that Theo is painted as a total nutter and syphilis victim. Whether he had the disease I cannot recall, and he was sensitive, but this film makes him look like a marriage between Margot Kidder on a stranger's lawn and Courtney Love on a stranger's lap.

Kudos to the wonderful Jean-Pierre Castaldi who plays Pere Tanguy the shopkeeper, and the even more brilliant Vladimir Yordanoff (Paul Gaugin). As a student of Vincent's life, these characters mean a lot to me and they were fairly depicted here. Side characters like these don't get lots of attention. (Though I won't bother to compare the cool Yordanoff to Anthony Quinn's scene chewing in LUST.)

This is overall a great film, because it is the first real Van Gogh biopic. It isn't a total remake of LUST FOR LIFE, though some will say it is. I won't argue that point, only strongly recommend this film for the spectacular way Altman brought it all together just right.

This is my favorite Altman film, and I think arguably his best film. However it is unquestionably the best film on Van Gogh.

My title for this review states that this is a dark film, perhaps a more fitting adjective would have been sober. The overall mood is fairly stern as Vincent's own mood appears to have been as well.

I can understand why some people may feel this film is insipid (although the adjective used by another reviewer was dull), the same way I could understand why many people might feel that Van Gogh's paintings are brutish and simplistic if it weren't for the fact they've constantly been told otherwise by the art establishment. In the end I just believe Altman nailed his subject, and this film ranks as one of the very best biographies on Van Gogh.

Tim Roth's performance was also very very good, and while so was Kirk Douglas' melodramatic performance in Lust for Life (a 1956 Hollywood film about Van Gogh), Roth has probably given us something much closer to the truth.

In short this film probably gets us as close to the reality of Vincent's last few years as we're able to come, and this ironically might be why some people dislike the film. Despite the popular image of Van Gogh as an expressionistic, even manic, personality, he was, the evidence suggests, a pensive, inflexible man who exuded an oppressive seriousness. No matter how much you like his paintings, now, he probably wasn't a person whose company you would have enjoyed, then.

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