Lust for Life  

You can tell that the people behind this movie really cared passionately for their subject (or at least, their interpretation of their subject).  I have admiration and criticism for just about everyone involved.  Kirk Douglas makes Vincent Van Gogh into a wiry beast of a painter, passionate, impulsive, generous and stubborn.  He jerks and pounces like an orange-haired tiger; when he gives his opinions about art and life, his diction is just one notch lower than the Charlton Heston school of self-righteous bombast (it helps that Douglas' Van Gogh is more complicated than Heston's cardboard Sunday School characters).  There's nothing subtle about Van Gogh's psychology -- he's out there all the time; any mental or spiritual suffering is instantly conveyed with contorted limbs and an aching face.  What I'm curious to know is whether this pantomiming depiction of the suffering artist was intended to gain sympathy for the Abstract Expressionists who were in the spotlight but largely indecipherable to the public then (and now).  Whatever the cause, I have to admit that I enjoyed Douglas' interpretation, because I believe it was his earnest, though simplistic take on Van Gogh's persona, and he put his full energies into the role, just as he would have imagined Van Gogh putting everything onto the canvas. 

It's even more entertaining to contrast Douglas' take on Van Gogh with the scene-setting of director Vincente Minelli.  Minelli's style is a series of composed set pieces, with very little camera movement; it echoes Cezanne more than Van Gogh.  All that is expressionistic is the vibrant yellows and blues that shine from scene to scene; the only other references are numerous tawdry real life replicas of scenes and figures that have appeared on Van Gogh's canvases.  As a result we're left viewing him through tempered, bourgeois eyes, kept somewhat distant from the full force of his passions (to paraphrase the old saying, we're looking at him more than we are with him), but still sensitive to his gift of color (in Technicolor).  This would probably sum up his brother Theo's view of Vincent, and it's not unreasonable to think Minnelli gives us Theo's fraternal perspective given that he's the most reasonable character in the film.  James Donald protrays him admirably, with a subtlety and restraint that captures what Minnelli's directing is really getting at.

Anthony Quinn won an Oscar playing Paul Gaugin for all of 8 minutes.  His impact is indeed felt, but it's not so much due to his acting talent than his ability to play a stiff to contrast nicely with the rabid Douglas.  When Gaugin arrives at Vincent's home, he regards the paintings strewn all over with an expression of both amazement at Vincent's prolificness and disdain for his slovenliness.  He brings order to Vincent's house, and then tries to do the same to Vincent's mind, leading to a nasty breakup and a severed ear.  It's Gaugin's character (not to be confused with Quinn's acting) that brings a certain complexity to our view of Van Gogh -- he can't be tamed by reason and order because they, embodied by Gaugin at least, are unreasonable: restricting, cold, matter of fact.  Like Donald's Theo and Minnelli, he doesn't know what to make of Van Gogh's larger than life genius, let alone live with it.  It remains out there, an artistic roman candle, both to behold and keep one's distance from.

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