A poetic film that managed to illustrate Vincent van Gogh's life through a series of vignettes and moments that were largely absent of dialogue. Any dialogue present served only to illuminate the thoughts and mental health of this seemingly troubled genius, rather than furthering any narrative. Director Julian Schnabel assumed that the audience for this film already has an idea of van Gogh's life and his purpose is really to create a filmscape echoing an artist's search for perfection and for truth; film is Schnabel's canvas as painting was to van Gogh.
Willem Dafoe bore a striking resemblance to the van Gogh's self-portraits and he had an intensity to the role that vividly brought Schnabel's van Gogh to life. Rami Malek could learn a lesson or two on acting. However, his age was a distraction. Van Gogh died at 37 years old and Dafoe is now 63 years old. Granted living condition then, and the fact that van Gogh was possibly an alcoholic, it was possible that van Gogh looked older than 37, but over 60 is a bit of a stretch. Especially when Dafoe was paired with Oscar Isaac's Paul Gaughin and Rupert Friend's Theo van Gogh (who is only younger than Vincent by 4 years).
As the film was scarce with dialogue, music and sound played an important role and the score by Tatiana Lisovskaya was alternately soothing and jarring, in line with the mentality of van Gogh. But also kudos to the sound mixing, sound editing and film editing team, and the cinematographer for creating a film that tried to recreate the inner workings of a possible mentally ill genius.
A great performance by Dafoe in a challenging film which demands attention for which the reward is a satisfying exploration into what the mind of this tortured genius would looked like.
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