Van Gogh possibly/most likely murdered

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Van Gogh possibly/most likely murdered

Postby Cordelia » Wed Nov 21, 2018 12:47 pm

From Julian Schnabel...

Image


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Cr7V1kYu8

Willem Dafoe, Mads Mikkelsen, Oscar Isaac, Niels Arestrup... Wow.

Edited to swap a better trailer.

Also...

MacCruiskeen » Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:11 pm wrote:
... I've just read Van Gogh: A Power Seething*, a very short, very sympathetic biographical study by the painter Julian Bell. There are only a few illustrations, but they're well chosen. It's astounding to look at VvG's earliest drawings and to realise how far he came so fast. He did it all in only eight years, as you say, and not so much by an act of will as by an act of desperate self-surrender out of an impulse one might call religious. His time as a priest among the poor was not wasted time.

His ending makes one of the saddest stories in art history, at least as sad as the short life of Keats, another writer of unforgettable letters.

*The subtitle comes from one of his letters to Theo: "Sometimes I feel a power seething within me..."

on edit: Bell dismisses the suggestion that Vincent was murdered. I don't have the book to hand right now so I can't quote it, but his reasoning convinced me, fwiw.


I found the book a very good read. I recall (I think) that Bell made an interesting observation that reading news about Jack the Ripper may have impacted Van Gogh's impulse to cut off a part of his ear and give it to a prostitute.

(I read in a review that Schnabel's film supports the theory that Van Gogh didn't commit suicide but was instead shot.)
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Van Gogh possibly/most likely murdered

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Nov 23, 2018 12:57 am

OT

Now that you mentioned Jack the Ripper here again that amazing Jack the Ripper thread by MacC:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40785
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Van Gogh possibly/most likely murdered

Postby Cordelia » Tue Feb 19, 2019 11:31 am

Just my two cents fwiw (I know 'At Eternity's Gate' was mostly lauded by critics)... I probably wanted so much to love this film and set myself up for disappointment. But it felt too much was about Julian Schnabel and not enough about Vincent Van Gogh--the filmmaker's ego got in the way of the film. I found the black screens, repeated dialogue and some other stylized devices to be disjointed, gimmicky even, and very annoying. And the audacity of Schnabel substituting some of his own ‘Van Gogh’ paintings-- arrogant and unnecessary!

But the cast is superb. Dafoe is brilliant, at 63(!) playing Van Gogh in his mid-late 30’s, and it worked. Dafoe looks both ancient and ageless anyway—I can’t think of anyone better to portray Van Gogh as a humble & intelligent man who's also very sane about his madness.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYkUoshavZw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LizRiCpCWqg

The shooting scene (too abrupt I thought) shows one of the young village boys pulling the trigger, so I wonder what film this Rolling Stone reviewer had watched when he wrote....


“At Eternity’s Gate is a ravishment of the senses, with cinematographer Benoît Delhomme — a master of the handheld camera — capturing the gorgeous play of sunlight on flowers, wheat fields and anything that else that seized Van Gogh’s attention. It’s also a study of the agony Van Gogh endured in his final years (he committed suicide in 1890 at 37), mad with talent and his own violent delirium to the point of cutting off his left ear (a moment unseen here).”

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/mov ... ew-756230/


Whatever, however........it’s tragic that this great man’s life ended in pain, through violence.
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

We may not choose the parameters of our destiny. But we give it its content. ~ Dag Hammarskjold 'Waymarks'
User avatar
Cordelia
 
Posts: 3697
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:07 pm
Location: USA
Blog: View Blog (0)

Previous

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 45 guests