At Eternity's Gate
Willem Dafoe teams with painter and director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) for this unorthodox but reverent account of Vincent van Gogh’s troubled last days. Dafoe won the prize for best actor in Venice, he is also nominated for an Oscar.
Schnabel devotes much of AT ETERNITY’S GATE to the act of creation itself, presenting the Post-Impressionist master’s artistic process as a visceral and internal experience while Dafoe, as Van Gogh, conveys the strenuous physicality of painting. The result is a kaleidoscopic and immersive film about being alive and reaching, through art, for the eternal – and about the beauty and wonder Van Gogh left behind, unaware of the profound impact it would have.
Director Julian Schnabel: ‘This is a film about painting and a painter and their relationship to infinity. It is told by a painter. It contains what I felt were essential moments in his life, this is not the official history – it’s my version. One that I hope could make you closer to him.’