Customer Reviews

Vincent & Theo

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

Although Robert Altman is proficient in re-creating the scenery of Van Gogh's life through the eyes of the painter with striking color and a vaguely bohemian atmosphere, he still fails to present Van Gogh the man or the artist in with any genuine originality. He focuses on Van Gogh, the tormented saint-artist, who forges ahead on the canvas with a drive to present the "suffering" of humanity. However, Altman precludes Van Gogh's obvious manias, his periods of demented elation. It is impossible to believe that the Van Gogh presented here could have produced those vibrant wheat fields in Arles, or the Night Café. What remains in this fractured (though never incompetent biopic), is Tim Roth's virtuoso performance; he managed to literally crawl into the skin of Van Gogh, and the result may frighten you. However, his virtuosity always overshadows Paul Rhys' rather tepid presentation of his brother Theo, though there are other admirable performances in the film, such as Wladimir Yordanoff's amiable presentation of Gauguin. Altman seems to be commenting, rather uninterestingly, about the commercial dimension of artistry, and of the impossibility of true recognition of genius. This is a conventional portrait of the unrecognized genius, it is a tale told again and again. However, Altman's imagery is captivating (with the help of Storraro), the photography looks like vibrant haloes emitted by Van Gogh's paintings, though the musical score is dreadful and morbid. Still you much watch this one for Tim Roth's inspired performance if nothing else.

This film is powerful, poetic and highly evocative of the most likely real relationship between Vincent and Theo. You constantly feel the underlying stress and yet great love between the two brothers.
It takes an artist like Robert Altman (and his son Stephen the set designer) to make great film about a great artist.

Robert Altman directed this interesting film biography of Vincent Van Gigh and his art dealer brother Theo, who felt terribly guilty because he couldn't sell any of his brother's paintings in his Paris art gallery. Altman's theme is about commercialism vs. artistic genius, and how tormented these two brothers are. It's beautifully photographed, but the movie feels long at 138 minutes and for some reason the conversations are whispered throughout the movie and are often inaudible.

Altman doesn't focus his story strongly enough: Theo is as tormented as much as Vincent is, but everytime the movie points up that fact, Altman switches to something else. There are some stunning scenes, however: the whole sunflower painting scene, for example, with Van Gogh going through the agony of trying to paint them to his exacting standards, and then the shot with the failed attempts in his dingy room - one's eyes bulge to take it all in. Worth a watch.

Let me preface this review with a bit of my own background, as regards what I was hoping for, in this little-known film about the incomparable creative genius, Vincent van Gogh:
I have been a life-long admirer of his art, both the paintings and his voluminous , intensely personal correspondence with his art-dealer brother, Theo. I've been to Amsterdam, solely to see many of his originals, in the Van Gogh Museum there. I own numerous books about his life and art, including the complete three volume set of his letters to Theo, which director Robert Altman reportedly used as the backbone of this film. I have read Irving Stone's 1934 classic piece of historical fiction, "Lust For Life" probably half a dozen times, and own the 1956 Kirk Douglas movie version as well. My home is filled with various reproductions of Vincent's art, including even many of his charcoal sketch works, and a few more expensive oil reproductions, too. He is my favorite artist, and was my personal introduction to art in general, when at the unknowing age of 14 I stumbled into the Impressionist wing at the Art Institute in Chicago (my home town), and found myself transfixed in front of "The Sower". I doubt I'll ever be the same. Even my first kiss from a girl comes in second to the magic of that moment.

So you can see, when I stumbled on the many favorable reviews for this movie ("Vincent and Theo") on this site (half of the 25 reviews to date consider this a 5 star movie), I bought a copy, sight unseen, hoping that the iconoclastic director Robert Altman would finally capture the full scope and intensity of Vincent Van Gogh's creative genius, as well as the endearing true story of Vincent's special relationship to his brother Theo. The script for that hardly needed much revision from the screen writer (Julian Mitchell), as Vincent's letters are as complete a script as has ever been written, as an unintentional autobiography of the man, and his art.

"Vincent and Theo", directed by Altman, was released in 1990, but not available on the current dvd till 2005. It's rather long (140 minutes), yet makes a number of significant short-cuts, in order to concentrate on the brother's relationship, rather than the full story of Vincent's turbulent life. A major omission is Vincent's early attempts at being a minister, in the Borinage mining town of Belgium, where to this day he is known as "The Christ of the Coalyards", for his singular, selfless devotion to his work. An important omission for this film, as several times in "Vincent and Theo" Vincent makes comments about his lost faith, and it's clear that shaped both his subsequent life and art in a great way.....yet this movie gives us no glimpse into WHY he felt that way. I didn't think this emphasis on the brother's relationship was wrong in and of itself, as clearly Vincent spent his entire creative life dependent on Theo for both financial and emotional support.....indeed, it was only through Theo's (and subsequently his wife, Johanna's)belief in the quality of Vincent's art, at a time when no one considered him a serious artist,that his art even survived. The major fault I have in this movie, however, is simply that I didn't find the portrayals of the principal characters to be all that accurate. And more importantly, despite the unique artistry of Altman's many films, I didn't feel like it adequately captured the genius of the artist.

Tim Roth plays Vincent, in a portrayal a little too heavy on the unbalanced side- but clearly that's how Altman intended it to be. In the accompanying documentary with the extras on this dvd, Altman starts right off by saying of Vincent, from HIS take on Vincent's letters, that he saw Vincent as entirely selfish, "always asking for money", and clearly just "mad as a hatter". Suffice it to say, personally I think that is an amazingly shallow take on the real man, and it comes to make Roth's portrayal throughout this film also somewhat shallow, however intensely acted. Roth visually looks much like Vincent, though perhaps a bit too slight of frame- the real Vincent was by all accounts (and despite his seemingly endless state of malnutrition and abject poverty) a physically imposing man. 4-5 stars for Roth's commitment to the role as given to him, but 1-2 stars for the depth of the portrayal.

Paul Rhys plays brother Theo, a respected art dealer of that time, and a tireless champion for the unkown but emerging school of post-impressionist artists, of whom Vincent would eventually emerge as their champion. The real Theo was clearly devoted to Vincent, and made countless financial and emotional sacrifices on the artist's behalf. He probably also died from tertiary syphilis (affecting the brain), in an asylum in Utrecht, just 6 months after Vincent's suicide. But again, as played by Rhys in this film, Theo emerges as a constantly twitchy, emotionally bizarre individual, who clearly cares for Vincent, but the glue that bound them so inseparably was just missing in this, for me. Rhys also bears little, if any, resemblance to the real Theo, who so resembled Vincent that one of the self-portraits of the artist is now believed by many to actually be a portrait of Theo.I suppose I have a much longer, detailed explanation for this, and I know many who rated this film so highly would simply disagree on this point, but for me, it lessened the overall impact of this film.

Perhaps more glaring is actress Johanna ter Steege's portrayal of Theo's wife, Johanna. Their first name seems to be the only thing the actress and the real woman share in common. It was solely through Johanna's faithful persistence in keeping Vincent's art, after the death of the two brothers, that any of it even survives today. She clearly had a deep love and caring for Vincent, and this simply is nowhere to be found in ter Steege's portrayal.

There are many supporting characters that are better portrayed in this one, especially Wladimir Yordanoff's take on Paul Gauguin, but the heart of this movie is clearly in the two brothers.

The cinematography is well-done, with many on-location shots where Vincent created his better known masterpieces, especially his amazing burst of creative activity while in Arles, St. Remy, and Auvers, in the last months/days of his life. We see the fields of sunflowers that exploded onto his canvases. We see the waving wheatfields, the intense sun and mistral wind of southern France, and even the swarming black crows, over that final wheatfield. One scene that was absent, however, that I think would have been a powerful one, is Vincent under a starry night, while he was a patient at St.Remy. Opportunity missed, there.

The musical score I found way over-the-top, and even distracting. I'm sure it was intended to be a musical translation of the inner turmoil going on in the artist's mind, but for me it was overdone, and there was also almost no soft, tender, or sad music- odd for a man who was so clearly and intensely acquainted with deep, deep sorrow.

The inevitable movie comparison is to the 1956 version, "Lust For Life", starring Kirk Douglas as Vincent, and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin (for which Quinn won an academy award).Theo in that movie, however, was a rather minor character, though the actor still managed, IMO, to convey more of the caring relationship Theo had for his tormented brother. "Lust For Life" is a much more conventional, structured bio...."Vincent and Theo" was shooting for something more than that. A noble attempt, but for my money, it still falls short. Far short.

I'd recommend "Vincent and Theo" to those who, like myself, are devoted admirers of the artist. For the casual viewer, however, I'm afraid it will only be a once-viewed flick, and for that reason, I'd rent, but not buy.
BTW: this movie is rated PG-13, entirely because of several brief scenes involving nudity- all of which are entirely appropriate for the story, as they all involve models posing for Vincent's work. Zero gratuitous nudity as far as sex goes, and no profanity whatsoever. Intense themes throughout, though, so probably not all that appropriate for children.

I will admit I am a huge fan of Altman, but I love this film on its own. Visually it is stunning: the photograhy and lighting are a wonder. The film itself is like a canvas for some beautiful art. The perfomances are excellent - watching the love and great conflict between the brothers is riveting. This is one of Altman's unsung gems. Highly recommended.

A story of two Vincent brothers is interesting for not much knowing the issue especially.

Vincent, an older one, was a mentally-disturbed painter while a younger offspring late Theo, an art dealer selling his brother's works, suffered from syphilis.

Probably, such a historic drama could usually be presented with a great degree of producers' imagination-their personal vision of the data historical, of which ear-catting is, as proven recently, a deed of despair same gender attracted Vincent was involved in, not a self-mutilation during a mind-blackout.

From this viewpoint, all surrounding the affair between a painter and a prostitute-cum-model is not so dramatically-substantial for erection-affected Vincent as a movie attempted stressing on.

Two hour screening is too long anyway.

This is the BEST DVD, acted footage I have seen, that portrays the life of Vincent & Theo. I have studied the artist in great extent, and every scene, every incident, is taken from real life incidents that are documented in the many letters and pieces of ART Work done by Van Gogh. He was a determined, yet sick and tormented soul.
No other ARTIST has left such a chronological documentation of their life, their struggles and their sorrows. Vincent did, and Theo gave his life to help him achieve that goal. When they didn't, Theo's wife took over where they left off, and after death, their dream was realized. This is WELL acted . . .the actor's playing the brother's seem to have taken over the minds of the individuals, and it is so touching and yet very heart breaking.
I have given this DVD to many other's to view; and even 'tho they are not Art Lovers ~ they have said after viewing it, that "I Now feel like I know this artist, and can look at his paintings with a whole new light . . ."
I highly recommend this DVD. (although, not so great for children's viewing, because they do throw in a little romance . . .)
I rate this on a AAAAA+ FIVE STARS PLUS