Show & Tell: At Eternity’s Gate
All:
I guess we have a few hours left to us before the White Gods of Winter erase us, and all memories of us, from the face of the Earth. Or maybe it’s just another snowstorm that’s on the way, and we won’t actually need the gallons of bottled water, the candles, the freeze-dried food and the rifle for dealing with the wolves.
We’ll see.
But on the off chance that we all survive and the roads are less hazardous than a Siberian white-out, I would like to invite you to join me at The Music Hall for a discussion of At Eternity’s Gate, the movie about Vincent van Gogh directed by Julian Schnabel.
Van Gogh is, of course, an attractive subject for a filmmaker, especially one who, like Schnabel, is also a painter. Schnabel, a powerful director whose The Butterfly and the Diving Bell was an international hit, says that he made a decision not to decide about van Gogh’s sanity or saintliness as most portrayals do. Instead, he wants to show what the world looked like to someone as obsessed by color as Vincent was. Van Gogh may or may not have been insane, but Schnabel believes that his paintings are “pictures of sanity.”
At Eternity’s Gate is also remarkable for the praise heaped on Willem Dafoe’s portrayal of the artist. It looks like a casting decision made in heaven, and Dafoe has earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance. It seems to me that Dafoe’s intensity as an actor, which sometimes serves his roles and often doesn’t, is a perfect pitch for playing an artist as intense as van Gogh.
The movie will run in The Historic Theater at 7:00 on Tuesday evening, February 12. And I hope to see you all there, weather permitting. Stay tuned.
And here’s a message for the movie-goers who made last week’s discussion of Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s masterpiece The Shoplifters so rewarding: I promised to send a list of the other Japanese movies I recommended, and here it is. Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (the best movie ever made, in my opinion, or at least my favorite) and Kenzi Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (also 1953). There are dozens of other candidates, but you could do worse than just work your way through Kurosawa’s catalog, which includes Ikiru, Yojimbo, and Ran, his take on Shakespeare’s King Lear. He’s especially accessible for Westerners and a giant of international cinema.
So let’s keep an eye on what the weather gods throw at us, but beseech them for tolerable driving conditions.
And finally, I’m told that the Regal Cinema in Newington is once again running all the movies nominated for Best Picture Oscars in bargain matinees. I haven’t been able to find the details, but if someone can send me a link, I’ll send it out to the group.
Paul Goodwin
TMHMG