It sounds terrible but anybody who is foolish enough to watch Van Gogh: Brush with Genius on DVD gets exactly what they deserve. Designed for the IMAX format the film, I’m sure, was still campy and barely watchable had you shelled out the big bucks to see it on the absurdly large screen but on your personal TV it turns into a goofy time suck devoid of any magic at all. Not that the whole production is a total throwaway. Any chance to glimpse the work of Vincent Van Gogh, a sheer master of his craft, should be seized and even I, somebody who feels confident in their knowledge of art history, got to see some of his paintings that were new to me. It’s also a throwback to the good ole early 2000’s when there were real movies created exclusively for IMAX as opposed to our current situation where laziness rules the day and those gigantic IMAX screen exists only to enlarge your already oversized Hollywood blockbuster. It’s a shame that director Francois Bertrand wasted this opportunity and instead trotted out a parade of cheesy missteps that resulted in a near substance free history lesson.
The first thing thoughtful viewers will notice as strange is the decision to have the entire thing narrated by Van Gogh himself coming to us, we are assume, from beyond the grave. Even worse is the fact that this Van Gogh at least isn’t much of a wordsmith. He drops totally unforgettable nuggets on us like “I notice that women find me much more interesting since I died.” (um, it’s because lines like that scare them away) and “I was on this Earth to paint, to paint right to the end.” Considering that no man, much less a drunk, depressed Van Gogh would ever seriously say such nonsense we’re left to conclude that the filmmakers here had the always lucrative K-6 demographic in mind. That is probably a smart enough move seeing as how real Van Gogh fanatics are going to be following him to the great museums of the world while potential fans of the younger set are much more likely to be wooed by something like this.
Also annoying, at least to me, was the casting of French actress Helene Seuzaret to play a fictional Van Gogh scholar who, we are made to believe, toils her days away in the basement of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It’s a bit of staginess that is unnecessary and only moves the film further away from its documentary status. Word has it that this character is based upon a real scholar who, unfortunately for him, is decidedly less attractive and much more male. I guess to bring in the kids these days only hot girls will do. They do use that character to delve into a debate surrounding the practice of uncovering what Van Gogh wrote, and then crossed off, on the back of postcards and such. One entry that is discussed shows that Van Gogh wrote to his brother imploring him not to lower the price of his paintings in order to make a sale. This, in a bizarre twist, discredits our narrator because earlier he bemoaned the fact that he never sold a piece of art in his life. Now we are being told that maybe he did have the opportunity to but he passed on doing so out of stubbornness; this makes his plight a lot less tragic.
I do feel as though some of the experience was lost on me. Obviously the ideal setting to have taken in this movie would have been in an IMAX theatre like it was intended (and, hey, it’s not too late as some of them are still playing this gem) as the real draw was having these masterpieces blown up to about 50 times their original size and then shoved in your face. I also had trouble discerning what the hell this faux Van Gogh was saying as he spoke in a thick, though still suspect French accent that was nearly impossible to penetrate. Closed captioning would have gone a long way here but sadly they were not included. About the best thing I can say for Van Gogh: Brush With Genius is that at least it is not the worst movie about Van Gogh ever made. Lust for Life is probably still the gold standard though it has problems of its own, nothing will ever touch the travesty that was Starry Night from 1999. That living nightmare found a time traveling Van Gogh walking around modern day California selling off his paintings and then donating the proceeds to other starving artists. It still stands as a case study in how not to make a no budget biopic. This benign work, in comparison, is still unworthy of your time but also unworthy of my venom.
Outside of my complaint about Van Gogh’s shady accent and the subsequent lack of subtitles to compensate everything here looks and sounds great.
They do include a slideshow of his work, not all of it of course, that is nice for a relaxing cool down session after the film. No need to watch it twice though.
Picking on this harmless homage to a giant of art history gives me no pleasure and yet there are just so many juicy things here to pick on. Director Francois Bertrand seems lost and confused as he focuses his attention anywhere but on the work itself. Luckily the film is only 40 minutes which means that it’s over before the real pain sets in but I could never actually recommend purchasing it. Rent it only if you have a thing of Van Gogh.
Image Entertainment presents Van Gogh: Brush with Genius. Directed by: Francois Bertrand . Starring: Jacques Gamblin, Helene Seuzaret, Peter Knapp. Written by: Francois Bertrand. Running time: 40 min. Rating: NR. Released on DVD and Blu-ray: November 2, 2010.
