Love Exists: The Films of Maurice Pialat: Van Gogh

Editor’s Note: The following review is part of our coverage of Love Exists: The Films of Maurice Pialat at TIFF Cinematheque. For more information, visit tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

Maurice Pialat’s 1991 Van Gogh is a steady, non-grandiose look at the famous painter’s final 67 days in the beautiful Auvers-sur-Oise, France. The opening shot follows the painter’s hand as he gently runs a paintbrush across a blue canvas; it is a peaceful start to a film which avoids high drama and concludes with similar quietness. As Vincent Van Gogh arrives by train and rents a room, the nearly three-hour film unfolds slowly and steadily, examining Van Gogh’s relationships with the people closest to him in his life: his brother and sister-in-law; his doctor and the doctor’s daughter; and the prostitutes he frequents.

Pialat has chosen not to focus on Van Gogh’s painting processes or to delve deeply and psychoanalytically into the various reasons behind the painter’s self-mutilation and ultimate suicide. . .

Two things tend to come to mind at the mention of Van Gogh: Starry Night, and the fact that he cut off his own ear. Pialat has chosen not to focus on Van Gogh’s painting processes or to delve deeply and psychoanalytically into the various reasons behind the painter’s self-mutilation and ultimate suicide, instead centring on the experiences and conversations between Van Gogh and the people in his life. Theo Van Gogh (Bernard Le Coq), brother to the painter and an art dealer, and Theo’s wife Jo (Corinne Bourdon) support Van Gogh financially, and this burden creates tension in the marriage, as well as between the two brothers, who love each other but are unable to clearly and honestly communicate. The brothers’ primary physician, Dr. Gachet (Gérard Séty), dismisses Van Gogh’s claims of pain and fits as psychosomatic, while his teenage daughter Marguerite Gachet (Alexandra London) mocks Van Gogh’s art and slowly falls in love with him.

Vincent is portrayed incredibly by Jacques Dutronc. Dutronc not only embodies the painter’s physical self, which, in these final few months is thin, hunched and ashen, but also his depressive state, punctuated in a handful of playful scenes by smiles and laughter subtly eclipsed by a shadow of Vincent’s deep-seated unhappiness and self-resentment. Le Coq effectively plays Theo as a brother torn between a familial duty to care for Vincent, while running out of patience for the artist’s depression and melancholy, and his primary responsibilities as art dealer, husband and father to his newborn son. Jo cares deeply for both brothers, and suffers in trying to reconcile their differences and bring happiness to everyone in their small family unit. Séty and London are excellent as the father and daughter intertwined in the painter’s psychological decline in vastly different ways: one, as a physician dually interested in Vincent medically and personally, and as a father trying to protect his daughter from the deteriorating painter, and the other, as a young, naïve spirit who is stubbornly confident she can handle the complexities of an adult world.

Vincent is called selfish and devoid of emotion by several people over the course of the film in attempts to extract some emotion, but Van Gogh merely dryly remarks with that shadowed smile that he is “happy as a lark” and he sees no point in being kind.

Vincent is called selfish and devoid of emotion by several people over the course of the film in attempts to extract some emotion, but Van Gogh merely dryly remarks with that shadowed smile that he is “happy as a lark” and he sees no point in being kind. As Van Gogh unravels, the people in his rally desperately, attempting to help him in the only ways they understand—whether it’s holding him, shedding quiet tears, scolding him for his hypochondria, fist fighting with him, or trying to reach him on a human level after encounters of prostitution.

Van Gogh is never a fast-paced film, and Pialat points a skillful lens at Vincent Van Gogh the person and how he relates to his environment, rather than dramatizing the ear incident or portraying his death in a grandiose way. Creatively brilliant, Van Gogh was, at the end of the day, a depressed brother, lover and friend, struggling with his identity as an artist and barely getting through each day, until he finally pulls the trigger on himself. As Marguerite hurled at him, “You can’t take paintings to the grave”—a sentiment that did not resonate with Van Gogh the way she’d hoped, but that is a fortunate truth for the world he left behind, as his personality and art will continue to inspire new artists of all mediums for generations to come.