NR, 105 min.
Director: Paul Cox
Writer: Vincent van Gogh
Narrator: John Hurt
Australian director Paul Cox
was one of Roger Ebert’s favorite directors. Four of his movies have been
featured at Ebertfest and he’s been a guest five times, once for a screening of
“On Borrowed Time”, a documentary about him. This year he came with one of his
documentaries, the very unique “Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent van
Gogh”.
I think Ebert felt Cox was a
good man. That alone made his films fascinating to Ebert. But, the subjects of
his films were also always good people. In “Innocence”, two good people
rekindle a romance that was interrupted by decades of separate lives. In “Man
of Flowers” a man takes the time to enjoy the things he finds good in life. And
in “A Woman’s Tale”, unseen by me, a cancer victim lives the final days of her
life in a self-portrait by the lead actress who herself was dying of cancer. In
this documentary, we learn about the life of famed painter Vincent van Gogh in
his own words. Narrated in an amazing voice over performance by John Hurt,
every word in the movie was taken from Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo.
We listen to the inspiration
of many of his most famous paintings. We hear his attempts to find purpose in
life through his study of theology. We hear the early signs of his severe
depression. We learn of his poverty first hand and of his efforts to do right
by a woman who carried a child that wasn’t even his. This was a man who
desperately wanted to do good deeds for the world, a task made harder by the
daily demons he fought from his mental illness. His art is probably the best
example of his need to be good, and Cox’s film is filled with the rich tones of
his paintings and beautiful photographic recreations of the scenes depicted in
the actual works.
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