At Eternity's Gate reviews

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Big Magilla
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Big Magilla »

True, but I meant Dafoe and Van Gogh not Hurt and Van Gogh for the comparison.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Greg »

Big Magilla wrote:A positive reference would have been someone like John Hurt who successfully played 21-year-old John Merrick in The Elephant Man at 40, a difference of 19 years vs. the difference of 25 years between Hurt and Vincent van Gogh.

Although Merrick was so deformed and Hurt was hidden in so much makeup that the relative ages of actor and subject was irrelevant.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Big Magilla »

Mister Tee wrote:How did this turn into the Book Club thread?
I started it in reference to the question of Dafoe's real age (62 at the time of filming) vs. the age of the character he's playing (37). A positive reference would have been someone like John Hurt who successfully played 21-year-old John Merrick in The Elephant Man at 40, a difference of 19 years vs. the difference of 25 years between Hurt and Vincent van Gogh.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Reza »

Precious Doll wrote:
Big Magilla wrote:The picture looks photoshopped. Either that that or Fonda has had more surgery than she admits to. She looks more anorexic than well-conditioned in the film. Candice Bergen is the only one who resembles a real-life character in this thing.
Candice Bergen easily had the most interesting role in the film. One of the things that is freaky about Jane Fonda isn't so much her appearance, she looks much younger than she is, but she has an old ladies voice of her age that simply jars with her appearance.
Actually Jane Fonda's voice has been the same. Hasn't aged or become husky as many do. She sounds like she did in the 1960s.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

How did this turn into the Book Club thread?

An unexpected free NY Film Festival ticket came my way last night, so, my early word on At Eternity's Gate:

Kind of a mixed bag. Schnabel is an inventive director, and he works hard to take viewers inside the mind of the tortured artist. Some things work well: there's a sequence of van Gogh working his way through drawing a pair of shoes, and the steps along the way -- line drawing here, daubs of color there -- feel accurate. (Compared, say, to how phony it feels in composer biographies when they show familiar tunes being "discovered" on the piano.) But other times the details, however genuine, are just boring to watch -- it's the classic "no one wants to watch the sausage being made". (They also tend to go on and on, in wordless collages, which had me tuning out. As my friend said, there's a reason for the expression "like watching paint dry".) Schnabel also does interesting things trying to convey van Gogh's inner chaos -- some (like a encounter with a young woman on the road) are very effective; others (like repetition of the words in his final argument with Gauguin) don't quite work for me. Though I will say, overall, the film goes deeper, more convincingly into the subject of van Gogh's madness than something like Lust for Life did. And it connects that madness to what van Gogh put on his canvases.

There's an odd element to the film conceptually: it seems to assume we already know all the key elements in van Gogh's life (Theo's patronage/Gauguin's visit/cutting off the ear/early death), and tries to work around them, finding new approaches -- the ear incident, for instance, is not depicted, merely referenced in retrospect. This certainly earns the film points for novelty, but at times it seems to be merely camouflaging the fact that we know all this stuff. The one truly new element for me was the circumstance around van Gogh's death, which I won't spoil here.

My friend said he disliked many of the dialogue scenes, and they sometimes went tiresomely on about the agony of the tortured artist. But it's the great Jean-Claude Carriere contributing, and I think he comes up with some powerful philosophical moments -- none moreso than a colloquium between Vincent and a priest, a scene that really lights the movie up.

The film has a terrific supporting cast of some of Europe's best actors, as well as Oscar Isaac as Gauguin. And, above all, Willem Dafoe, pretty perfectly cast as van Gogh. Schnabel gives Dafoe a number of scenes (in the hospital with Theo, being interviewed by a doctor post-ear removal, the afore-mentioned exchange with the priest), largely shot in close-up, that provide all the Oscar clips many of us thought were missing from his touted Florida Project work last year. I'm not saying he's a shoo-in nominee -- the film may be too outre to get Academy recognition. But I will say, if voters are going to continue citing showy lead performances in wobbly biographical films, I'd much prefer them honoring something like than this Trumbo.

Bottom line? Far from a completely successful film, but an ambitious and often interesting one, with a memorable leading performance.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

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Big Magilla wrote:The picture looks photoshopped. Either that that or Fonda has had more surgery than she admits to. She looks more anorexic than well-conditioned in the film. Candice Bergen is the only one who resembles a real-life character in this thing.
Candice Bergen easily had the most interesting role in the film. One of the things that is freaky about Jane Fonda isn't so much her appearance, she looks much younger than she is, but she has an old ladies voice of her age that simply jars with her appearance.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Big Magilla »

The picture looks photoshopped. Either that that or Fonda has had more surgery than she admits to. She looks more anorexic than well-conditioned in the film. Candice Bergen is the only one who resembles a real-life character in this thing.

My review is here:

http://www.cinemasight.com/the-dvd-report-584/
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Bog »

Magilla....not to derail this thread too much...

I think the question isn't Willem Defoe's objective age but his objective appearance compared to historical evidence?...but I am quite curious about your statement: are you upset the actresses are not the same age or that they don't look the same age? I find it hard to believe the 3 women on the left appear much different in age at all to the 4th on the right, apparently the some actor portraying the "correct" age.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Okri »

While the historical aspect always convinces me to give films the benefit of the doubt re: age, I actually don't think Dafoe looks THAT young. Looking through imdb to see who was born the same year as Dafoe is fun though. I've joked in the past that Hollywood wrecked my ability to tell how a teenager should look since I stopped being one and apparently I have no idea what 63 looks like.

I don't care for Schnabel's films in general, but I'm curious about this one (mainly for Oscar Isaac).
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Big Magilla »

dws1982 wrote:This one has a big hurdle with me in the fact that Dafoe is nearly thirty years older than Van Gogh was when he died. I try not to get too wound up over casting but I'm not sure that I can get past this.
I get more wound up over things like 65-year-old Mary Steenburgen, 72-year-old Diane Keaton, 72-year-old Candice Bergen and 80-year-old Jane Fonda all pretending to be the same age (67) in tripe like Book Club with 74-year-old Craig T, Nelson,62-year-old Andy Garcia, 70-year-old Richard Dreyfuss and 68-year-old Don Johnson as their respective significant others.

Van Gogh may have been 37 when he died, but he had a hard life and looked more like today's 50. Dafoe may be 63, but he can easily pass for 50 or in this case, a 37-year-old who looked 50. Rupert Friend, who plays Vicent's brother Theo is 36, just 3 years older than Theo was at the time of his death a few months after his brother's.
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Re: At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by dws1982 »

This one has a big hurdle with me in the fact that Dafoe is nearly thirty years older than Van Gogh was when he died. I try not to get too wound up over casting but I'm not sure that I can get past this.
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At Eternity's Gate reviews

Post by Mister Tee »

Here's a name we heard a lot last year (Dafoe) matched to a name we haven't heard in a while (Schnabel), in a film the trades are fairly strong on. With Best Actor seemingly weak right now, Dafoe could be a solid contender.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/revie ... 18-1138894

https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/a ... 202924953/

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/at-et ... 201996425/
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