Vincent Van Gogh Revisited
Both the latest DW episode and comment from 
wee_warrior reminded me of my favourite fictional depiction of Vincent Van Gogh, which is Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo. (I saw it in its cinematic version as a movie first, but he shot it as a tv miniseries, and that's how I acquired on dvd in February after visiting a fantastic Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, and then had the opportunity to rewatch.
To go through the competition first, the most famous fictionalisation of Van Gogh's life is probably Irving Stone's novel Lust for Life and the 1950s movie based on it, which stars Kirk Douglas as Vincent. Now I enjoy many a Stone biographical novel (my favourite is probably his take on Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy), and the Van Gogh novel that made his name is still very readable (and uses Van Gogh's letters to his brother a lot), but it's also strictly Vincent-as-martyr-and-saint-for-his-art, with only bad people misunderstanding him. (The film, which admittedly I haven't rewatched in eons, tons down something in Stone's novel that comes across quite differently than intended to today's readers, and that's the problem of Vincent's attempted relationships with women before he resigns himself to prostitutes. The one with his cousin Kee, whom he befriends and then tries to romance, only to find himself firmly rebuffed, has the problem of avid novel-reader Vincent being convinced that "no, never" means really "yes" if he tries hard enough, leading to stalking and a final attempt of seeing her by holding his hand in the fire in order to blackmail a meeting. This all actually happened - see a typical Kee-related later to his brother - , but the problem is that Stone presents it with an undertone of "how can this woman say no?".) Otoh, in the film, no character other than Vincent and possibly the few minutes of Gauguin as played by Anthony Quinn come to life; everyone else is sort of shadowy around.
Altman and his scriptwriter Julian Mitchell, by contrast, firstly exclude the early period of Vincent the failed art dealer and Vincent the failed Evangelist and the two failed attempts at romances within his own class and start at the very point where he decides to become a painter, secondly provide an additional emotional focus (additional to his development as a painter, that is) with the fraternal relationship (the film isn't named "Vincent and Theo" for nothing; Theo really is as important a main character as Vincent), and thirdly manage to handle their ensemble of supporting characters very well. Even those who are just around in a few scenes, like Sien the prostitute who models for Vincent and with whom he lives for a while, or Dr. Gachet (archly characterized as a phony and slightly creepy in his obessiveness about his daughter, which may be mean on the script's part but is a viable interpretation), are memorably written and played, and so is the most important of the supporting characters, Jo(hanna) Bonger, later Theo's wife. Sien and Jo, different as they are, are both realists, as opposed to the two neurotic idealists they're involved with. Actually, you can generally say that women in this film are refreshingly un-idealized or demonized but three dimensional and sane, whereas the men, and I don't just mean the Van Gogh boys, could all use therapy. But had they gotten it, we probably wouldn't have had a movie/miniseries.
Relations of geniuses, much like wives (or more rarely husbands) of geniuses, have it tough when it comes to biopics. If they aren't completely supportive, they, with the hindsight the audience has, Misunderstand The Genius, which makes them bad. Now, Theo van Gogh, four years younger than Vincent, was the original supportive relation. (Which didn't stop him being depicted as a hypocritical bourgois in the French movie Van Gogh, but that's another matter. Boo, hiss on the Theo bashing therein.) First he financed Vincent in secret, pretending the money came from their father, then openly for the rest of his brother's life; when Vincent died, Theo died six months later after a complete physical and mental breakdown. Until Mitchell & Altman, however, this in fictional representations didn't evoke much interest in what he was like. (For which we have admittedly way less material than for Vincent, because Theo kept all of Vincent's letters, starting from when Theo was 15 and Vincent was 19, to the last one Vincent had with him when he shot himself, whereas only a very few of Theo's letters survive, plus some descriptions from other people, since he was a well-liked art dealer who pushed for the impressionists.) Lust for Life the film makes him a shadowy saint in the background, the novel fleshes him about a bit more by letting Toulouse-Lautrec remark archly that "it's a pity Theo is a man and Vincent's brother, otherwise he'd make the ideal wife for him".
Vincent and Theo goes for a co-dependent sibling relationship of the first degree plus mutual passion for art; when Theo early on tells his mistress that as a boy he dreamt of entering a painting and remaining there forever, he expresses something that becomes in a cruel way true by the end when after his brother's death he is surrounded by Vincents' paintings and yells at his wife that this is the most important thing before breaking down entirely. It's anything but an idyllic relationship (they even get introduced with an argument, with classic Altman overlapping dialogue when Vincent shows his first sketches and Theo is less than impressed), but an incredibly intense one, and the actors, Tim Roth and Paul Rhys, play it really well, and the parallels and differences between the brothers. In terms of the usual depiction of artist's lives where the support from non-artists is presented as The Right Thing To Do (and morally wrong when it doesn't occur), here we have the support as the right thing to do, yes, but it's also clear that it means Theo will never have a life of his own, and the late attempt to have one with Jo and a baby is threatening to fall apart even before Vincent commits suicide.
Van Gogh as a painter is a gift for a director, of course, but Altman doesn't blindly recreate landscapes and people, which is why the transformative process of art works so well on screen here. (Case in point: the famous last painting of the landscape with crows. In the actual field Vincent paints, there are no crows. He adds them.) The shift from darker-lit Dutch scenes (Altman shot on location) to bright-lit French ones comes step by step, via Vincent's time in Paris (and Theo's flat, which is semi-dark lit) before the explosion of colour in Provence. (The sunflowers, introduced via camera push and pull, come across as sinister sirens, which is an interesting contrast to the way the DW episode sues them.) And you believe the other painters, too; Emile Bernard, sketching Vincent while Vincent is drawing someone else, and Gauguin perking up when hearing Vincent has an art dealer as a brother. (Gauguin didn't use to be a stockbroker for nothing.)
Not something to watch when you need cheering up, but far too energetic to be called depressing (even when it depicts depression); when most of Altman's other works occupy me intellectually but not emotionally, Vincent and Theo is the one Altman oeuvre that always makes me feel as well, and the Van Gogh fictionalisation I'd recommend to anyone interested in watching another. If, ototh, you want a primary source: all of Van Gogh's letters are online in English, complete with illustrations (the paintings and sketches he refers to, and scans of the original letters, and the few replies by Theo (and Jo) that still exist. To conclude with Van Gogh's own words: Well, the truth is, we cannot speak other than by our paintings. But still, my dear brother, there is this that I have always told you, and I repeat it once more with all the earnestness that can be imparted by an effort of a mind diligently fixed on trying to do as well as one can - I tell you again that I shall always consider that you are something other than a simple dealer in Corots, that through my mediation you have your part in the actual production of some canvases, which even in the cataclysm retain their calm.
wee_warrior reminded me of my favourite fictional depiction of Vincent Van Gogh, which is Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo. (I saw it in its cinematic version as a movie first, but he shot it as a tv miniseries, and that's how I acquired on dvd in February after visiting a fantastic Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, and then had the opportunity to rewatch.
To go through the competition first, the most famous fictionalisation of Van Gogh's life is probably Irving Stone's novel Lust for Life and the 1950s movie based on it, which stars Kirk Douglas as Vincent. Now I enjoy many a Stone biographical novel (my favourite is probably his take on Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy), and the Van Gogh novel that made his name is still very readable (and uses Van Gogh's letters to his brother a lot), but it's also strictly Vincent-as-martyr-and-saint-for-his-art, with only bad people misunderstanding him. (The film, which admittedly I haven't rewatched in eons, tons down something in Stone's novel that comes across quite differently than intended to today's readers, and that's the problem of Vincent's attempted relationships with women before he resigns himself to prostitutes. The one with his cousin Kee, whom he befriends and then tries to romance, only to find himself firmly rebuffed, has the problem of avid novel-reader Vincent being convinced that "no, never" means really "yes" if he tries hard enough, leading to stalking and a final attempt of seeing her by holding his hand in the fire in order to blackmail a meeting. This all actually happened - see a typical Kee-related later to his brother - , but the problem is that Stone presents it with an undertone of "how can this woman say no?".) Otoh, in the film, no character other than Vincent and possibly the few minutes of Gauguin as played by Anthony Quinn come to life; everyone else is sort of shadowy around.
Altman and his scriptwriter Julian Mitchell, by contrast, firstly exclude the early period of Vincent the failed art dealer and Vincent the failed Evangelist and the two failed attempts at romances within his own class and start at the very point where he decides to become a painter, secondly provide an additional emotional focus (additional to his development as a painter, that is) with the fraternal relationship (the film isn't named "Vincent and Theo" for nothing; Theo really is as important a main character as Vincent), and thirdly manage to handle their ensemble of supporting characters very well. Even those who are just around in a few scenes, like Sien the prostitute who models for Vincent and with whom he lives for a while, or Dr. Gachet (archly characterized as a phony and slightly creepy in his obessiveness about his daughter, which may be mean on the script's part but is a viable interpretation), are memorably written and played, and so is the most important of the supporting characters, Jo(hanna) Bonger, later Theo's wife. Sien and Jo, different as they are, are both realists, as opposed to the two neurotic idealists they're involved with. Actually, you can generally say that women in this film are refreshingly un-idealized or demonized but three dimensional and sane, whereas the men, and I don't just mean the Van Gogh boys, could all use therapy. But had they gotten it, we probably wouldn't have had a movie/miniseries.
Relations of geniuses, much like wives (or more rarely husbands) of geniuses, have it tough when it comes to biopics. If they aren't completely supportive, they, with the hindsight the audience has, Misunderstand The Genius, which makes them bad. Now, Theo van Gogh, four years younger than Vincent, was the original supportive relation. (Which didn't stop him being depicted as a hypocritical bourgois in the French movie Van Gogh, but that's another matter. Boo, hiss on the Theo bashing therein.) First he financed Vincent in secret, pretending the money came from their father, then openly for the rest of his brother's life; when Vincent died, Theo died six months later after a complete physical and mental breakdown. Until Mitchell & Altman, however, this in fictional representations didn't evoke much interest in what he was like. (For which we have admittedly way less material than for Vincent, because Theo kept all of Vincent's letters, starting from when Theo was 15 and Vincent was 19, to the last one Vincent had with him when he shot himself, whereas only a very few of Theo's letters survive, plus some descriptions from other people, since he was a well-liked art dealer who pushed for the impressionists.) Lust for Life the film makes him a shadowy saint in the background, the novel fleshes him about a bit more by letting Toulouse-Lautrec remark archly that "it's a pity Theo is a man and Vincent's brother, otherwise he'd make the ideal wife for him".
Vincent and Theo goes for a co-dependent sibling relationship of the first degree plus mutual passion for art; when Theo early on tells his mistress that as a boy he dreamt of entering a painting and remaining there forever, he expresses something that becomes in a cruel way true by the end when after his brother's death he is surrounded by Vincents' paintings and yells at his wife that this is the most important thing before breaking down entirely. It's anything but an idyllic relationship (they even get introduced with an argument, with classic Altman overlapping dialogue when Vincent shows his first sketches and Theo is less than impressed), but an incredibly intense one, and the actors, Tim Roth and Paul Rhys, play it really well, and the parallels and differences between the brothers. In terms of the usual depiction of artist's lives where the support from non-artists is presented as The Right Thing To Do (and morally wrong when it doesn't occur), here we have the support as the right thing to do, yes, but it's also clear that it means Theo will never have a life of his own, and the late attempt to have one with Jo and a baby is threatening to fall apart even before Vincent commits suicide.
Van Gogh as a painter is a gift for a director, of course, but Altman doesn't blindly recreate landscapes and people, which is why the transformative process of art works so well on screen here. (Case in point: the famous last painting of the landscape with crows. In the actual field Vincent paints, there are no crows. He adds them.) The shift from darker-lit Dutch scenes (Altman shot on location) to bright-lit French ones comes step by step, via Vincent's time in Paris (and Theo's flat, which is semi-dark lit) before the explosion of colour in Provence. (The sunflowers, introduced via camera push and pull, come across as sinister sirens, which is an interesting contrast to the way the DW episode sues them.) And you believe the other painters, too; Emile Bernard, sketching Vincent while Vincent is drawing someone else, and Gauguin perking up when hearing Vincent has an art dealer as a brother. (Gauguin didn't use to be a stockbroker for nothing.)
Not something to watch when you need cheering up, but far too energetic to be called depressing (even when it depicts depression); when most of Altman's other works occupy me intellectually but not emotionally, Vincent and Theo is the one Altman oeuvre that always makes me feel as well, and the Van Gogh fictionalisation I'd recommend to anyone interested in watching another. If, ototh, you want a primary source: all of Van Gogh's letters are online in English, complete with illustrations (the paintings and sketches he refers to, and scans of the original letters, and the few replies by Theo (and Jo) that still exist. To conclude with Van Gogh's own words: Well, the truth is, we cannot speak other than by our paintings. But still, my dear brother, there is this that I have always told you, and I repeat it once more with all the earnestness that can be imparted by an effort of a mind diligently fixed on trying to do as well as one can - I tell you again that I shall always consider that you are something other than a simple dealer in Corots, that through my mediation you have your part in the actual production of some canvases, which even in the cataclysm retain their calm.