Search - Van Gogh on DVD

No Starry Night

Raymond Smith | Out Honkytonkin' Somewhere | 08/08/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This should not be viewed as a 'biography'. It is a ficticious movie that presents Vincent as a lady's man.

It is made even worse as a 'life of the artist' because all the actors are very convincing and resemble their namesakes. A viewer who does not know more than the usual 'van Gogh was crazy and he cut off his ear' will unfortunately take this account as truth. But even they will be confused, as I was, because at this period in his life, Vincent's ear would have been disfigured.

It would have been a better idea to present this as a French Impressionist who lived at the same time, but with a different name. The period scenes, rooms and railcars are nice.

Nice touches are when Theo's wife is bathing, she resembles a Degas bather.
In the deleted scenes, there's a funny one of Vincent observing a family with a baby taking it's first steps. It's a reference to the Millet painting 'First Steps', that Vincent made his own copy of. He makes a grumbling remark about that 'damn Millet'. This likely isn't the way he would have felt about that artist either, since he greatly admired Millet and made many many copies after Millet's work. But-it's still funny to someone who gets the joke.

Your money would be better spent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, where you can see van Gogh's 'First Steps-after Millet'."

The best

D. Barker | 06/16/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Along with Victor Erice's El Sol de Membrillo one of the few great films about a painter."