Painting Eternity: Andrei Rublev, At Eternity's Gate

Painting Eternity

On December 4, the Canadian Film Institute of which I am a longtime ambassador member presented a very special event—the screening of a fully restored version of Andrei Tarkovsky’s 205-minute masterwork Andrei Rublev, first seen in Moscow in December 1966 but suppressed by the Soviet authorities.  It was not shown internationally until 1969 (at the Cannes film festival), and not in North America until October 1973.  [Interestingly 1966 is also when Sergey Bondarchuk’s epic monumental 427-minute War and Peace was first released in the Soviet Union. Among my greatest films of all time it’s reviewed in my book The Best of Screenings & Meanings at pp. 29-30 and 168-169.]

            The setting for Andrei Rublev is the early 15^th century Russian empire.  The titular central figure is a monk and renowned icon painter.  Beyond the monastery many of the scenes take place in and around the ancient city of Vladimir (200 kms east of Moscow), which had been the medieval capital.  Its Cathedral of the Assumption (Dormition) is where the grand princes were crowned.  Beyond striking black-and-white cinematography, the film is notable for its deeply religious imagery and allusions. (As master painter Theophanes the Greek says to Rublev: “If Jesus returned to earth, they would crucify him again.” That calls to mind Dostoevky’s famous parable of The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov.) There is much else: ribaldry, nudity in a pagan ceremony, rain-soaked mire, treacherous rivalries, extreme violence including torture and a massacre in the cathedral when the Tatars sack Vladimir. (This Mongol invasion actually occurred in 1238.) Scenes of that, and subsequently of the casting of an immense bell, are staged on an awesome scale in which Orthodox Christendom faces a constant struggle between good and evil.  It seems almost impossible that a movie so steeped in reverential religion was made in the officially atheist Cold War USSR.

            There’s actually very little painting shown in Andrei Rublev, until near the end when the screen resolves into a glorious montage, in colour, of rich iconography that has survived the ravages and vicissitudes of history. The icon painters were clearly aiming for the eternal, however compromised and ephemeral the imperial masters that employed them.  (Read more: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/43-andrei-rublev-an-icon-emerges.)

At Eternity’s Gate (Switzerland/UK/France/U.S. https://www.ateternitysgate-film.com/)

The life and work of the late 19^th century Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh continues to fascinate.

Last year’s Loving Vincent was an unusual exploration creating a story around him told entirely through oil-painted frames using his signature swirling brush technique.  This film, helmed by Julian Schnabel, a filmmaker who is also a painter, is a more conventional biopic of Van Gogh’s troubled later years. Van Gogh was a disturbed personality and social outcast. He famously cut off an ear and was committed several times to asylums. Unable to sell his paintings he survived through support from his brother Theo.  (Now considered masterworks worth hundreds of millions of dollars, those not in museums could only be afforded by billionaires.)

            Willem Dafoe throws himself into the role of the tormented Van Gogh (awarded best actor at the Venice film festival) although, in his mid-60s, he is old for the part of a man who died at age 37 in 1890. (Following a period of intense productivity in Auvers-sur-Oise, the untimely cause of death, from a gunshot wound to the stomach, remains controversial—was it self-inflicted?)  The film spends considerable time on Van Gogh’s relationship with Paul Gaugin (Oscar Isaac), a more successful post-impressionist artistic rebel. Van Gogh was driven, and almost driven mad, by a compulsive eccentric artistic vision of nature and beauty.  In an asylum he confesses to a skeptical yet sympathetic priest (played by Mads Mikkelsen): “Maybe God made me a painter for people who aren’t born yet.”  (That has proved to be prescient indeed.)  In the conversation Van Gogh also speaks about Jesus.  Viewers may recall Dafoe’s remarkable title role in Scorsese’s controversial The Last Temptation of Christ.

            For all of Dafoe’s admirable effort, including imitating brush strokes on famous canvasses, At Eternity’s Gate isn’t a masterwork.  The language mix is odd with smatterings of French but most of the dialogue in English (including a few voiceovers by Van Gogh with a blank screen), The musical score is intrusive at times.  Key relationships (notably with Gaugin, Theo) and encounters are more sketched than deeply explored.  Still the enduring Van Gogh mystique is enough to make this an interesting work.  B