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Post by Jep Gambardella on Dec 7, 2018 15:39:17 GMT
Directed by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls). Willem Dafoe plays Vincent, which is a strange casting choice, since he is 63 years old and Vincent died when he was 37.
Sounds pretty good. I will certainly be watching it this weekend.
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Post by Nora on Dec 9, 2018 1:45:01 GMT
Directed by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls). Willem Dafoe plays Vincent, which is a strange casting choice, since he is 63 years old and Vincent died when he was 37.
Sounds pretty good. I will certainly be watching it this weekend.
wow i never realized vincent was only 37. good point. jesus, thats young. i am sure dafoe is amazing in the lead, plan to see it soon too.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Dec 10, 2018 17:11:14 GMT
I saw it over the weekend and I have mixed feelings. I love van Gogh’s paintings and I am fascinated by his tragic life – if I ever get my hands on a time machine, he will probably be the first historical figure I’d visit – so I was looking forward to this movie, especially since I really liked “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by the same director.
I wasn’t expecting a conventional biopic but I wasn’t expecting such an “artsy-fartsy” one either. There are some stunning sequences and beautiful shots, and Willem Dafoe’s performance is pretty good (the fact that the actor is 25 years too old for the role didn’t bother me at all), but gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent.
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Post by Nora on Dec 10, 2018 19:25:09 GMT
I saw it over the weekend and I have mixed feelings. I love van Gogh’s paintings and I am fascinated by his tragic life – if I ever get my hands on a time machine, he will probably be the first historical figures I’d visit – so I was looking forward to this movie, especially since I really liked “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by the same director. I wasn’t expecting a conventional biopic but I wasn’t expecting such an “artsy-fartsy” one either. There are some stunning sequences and beautiful shots, and Willem Dafoe’s performance is pretty good (the fact that the actor is 25 years too old for the role didn’t bother me at all), but gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent. oh no. i hate that. too bad that they went for that. that messes a movie up each time i think.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Dec 10, 2018 19:41:02 GMT
I saw it over the weekend and I have mixed feelings. I love van Gogh’s paintings and I am fascinated by his tragic life – if I ever get my hands on a time machine, he will probably be the first historical figures I’d visit – so I was looking forward to this movie, especially since I really liked “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by the same director. I wasn’t expecting a conventional biopic but I wasn’t expecting such an “artsy-fartsy” one either. There are some stunning sequences and beautiful shots, and Willem Dafoe’s performance is pretty good (the fact that the actor is 25 years too old for the role didn’t bother me at all), but gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent. oh no. i hate that. too bad that they went for that. that messes a movie up each time i think.
Fortunately it is not throughout the movie. It is only a few minor characters that do it. There is a strange mixture of English with the actors' normal accent, French with subtitles, and English with a fake French accent. Willem Dafoe speaks several lines in passable French as well.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Dec 29, 2018 10:44:07 GMT
I saw it over the weekend and I have mixed feelings. I love van Gogh’s paintings and I am fascinated by his tragic life – if I ever get my hands on a time machine, he will probably be the first historical figure I’d visit – so I was looking forward to this movie, especially since I really liked “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by the same director. I wasn’t expecting a conventional biopic but I wasn’t expecting such an “artsy-fartsy” one either. There are some stunning sequences and beautiful shots, and Willem Dafoe’s performance is pretty good (the fact that the actor is 25 years too old for the role didn’t bother me at all), but gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent. I found At Eternity's Gate to be a "very good" film, perhaps one of the year's ten best releases. I generally disdain constant shaky camerawork, with a prime example being this fall's First Man, directed by Damien Chazelle. The shaky camera makes sense when we see Neil Armstrong in the cockpit of his jet, struggling to land after his nearly-orbital X-15 flight. But why is the camera still shaking several scenes later in an objective shot of Armstrong and his wife in their bedroom? And why does it constantly shake throughout the film, regardless of the scene or sequence? Many a contemporary movie has been harmed by this pseudo-artistic technique. Thus at first, I found the shaky camera in At Eternity's Gate to be distracting. Very quickly, though, I recognized that the shaky camera here represented something different—that it possessed a genuine purpose. By the time that I saw Van Gogh conversing on the street corner with Paul Gaugin a few scenes into the film, I figured out that there was a real motivation at play and that director Julian Schnabel was seeking to often place the viewer in the position of the camera, to effectively turn the viewer into an invisible voyeur. Thus I quickly embraced the shaky camera technique in this instance, for the director was using it differently and for a particular purpose. Much later, the film explicitly confirmed that intention when Van Gogh talked about feeling as if he was haunted by an invisible spirit. Generally, the shaky camera is objective yet very close to Van Gogh—just in front of him, or just to the side, or on his shoulder, or just behind him. On other occasions, the shaky camera fulfills the purpose of subjective point-of-view shots. In both cases, the motivation appears to be to bring the viewer closer to Van Gogh and try to let him or her share the artist's heightened experience, bordering on derangement or nature-inspired ecstasy. And the purpose is also to emphasize Van Gogh's haunted quality, his sense of being invisibly demonized. Overall, the technique renders this film something more daring, intimate, and visceral than the usual biopic. The blurry focus that you refer to is less explicable and somewhat harder to defend. Schnabel only seemed to use it during subjective shots involving Van Gogh; was he suggesting that the painter possessed a physical or psychological blind spot? That technique was intriguing yet less effective. Having all the actors speaking English briefly struck me as curious during the film, but then, Loving Vincent used the same technique, and, hey, so did Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List. Matters can be more efficient that way, if also less accurate historically. But not having the actors speak English in a neutral accent makes sense in the sense that if continentals were going to be speaking English, it probably would have been heavily accented. Overall, I felt that At Eternity's Gate was wonderful visually—in part by using replicas of Van Gogh's paintings—and proved poignant without indulging sentimentality. It combined passionate ethos with dry pathos, and while the Jesus Christ analogy was a bit strained, it also made sense given the film's thematic explorations. And the film's techniques were also innovative and really situated the viewer in Van Gogh's physical and psychological milieu. Ultimately, At Eternity's Gate makes for a splendid complement to last year's genuinely "great" Loving Vincent, which deserved the Oscar for Best Animated Feature over the colorful yet far more pedestrian Coco.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Jan 3, 2019 17:34:40 GMT
I saw it over the weekend and I have mixed feelings. I love van Gogh’s paintings and I am fascinated by his tragic life – if I ever get my hands on a time machine, he will probably be the first historical figure I’d visit – so I was looking forward to this movie, especially since I really liked “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” by the same director. I wasn’t expecting a conventional biopic but I wasn’t expecting such an “artsy-fartsy” one either. There are some stunning sequences and beautiful shots, and Willem Dafoe’s performance is pretty good (the fact that the actor is 25 years too old for the role didn’t bother me at all), but gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent. (...) Having all the actors speaking English briefly struck me as curious during the film, but then, Loving Vincent used the same technique, and, hey, so did Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List. Matters can be more efficient that way, if also less accurate historically. But not having the actors speak English in a neutral accent makes sense in the sense that if continentals were going to be speaking English, it probably would have been heavily accented.
Great review, thanks for posting it. I agree completely with what you wrote about the shaky camera in First Man. In At Eternity's Gate, I understand that there were probably very good artistic reasons for the director's choices, but still I thought it made it unpleasant to watch.
On the subject of language, my problem is not with the dialogues being in English, but with the accent. If in the story a French character is speaking English, then by all means use a French accent. If however the characters would be speaking in French and we are just hearing it in English, then in my opinion the accent should be as neutral as possible. I don't need to be reminded that the characters are actually speaking French but the actors are speaking English for the sake of convenience.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Jan 4, 2019 9:13:52 GMT
Great review, thanks for posting it. I agree completely with what you wrote about the shaky camera in First Man. In At Eternity's Gate, I understand that there were probably very good artistic reasons for the director's choices, but still I thought it made it unpleasant to watch.
On the subject of language, my problem is not with the dialogues being in English, but with the accent. If in the story a French character is speaking English, then by all means use a French accent. If however the characters would be speaking in French and we are just hearing it in English, then in my opinion the accent should be as neutral as possible. I don't need to be reminded that the characters are actually speaking French but the actors are speaking English for the sake of convenience.
... intriguing point. So you feel that when the French characters are speaking English, it is more in the sense that the audience is hearing it in English, as opposed to them actually speaking English? The question brings into play a whole matter about the nature of dialogue and the "diegesis," so to speak (kind of like how there is diegetic and non-diegetic music, or at times quasi-diegetic music that blends the two).
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Post by mecano04 on Jan 30, 2019 22:36:49 GMT
Great review, thanks for posting it. I agree completely with what you wrote about the shaky camera in First Man. In At Eternity's Gate, I understand that there were probably very good artistic reasons for the director's choices, but still I thought it made it unpleasant to watch.
On the subject of language, my problem is not with the dialogues being in English, but with the accent. If in the story a French character is speaking English, then by all means use a French accent. If however the characters would be speaking in French and we are just hearing it in English, then in my opinion the accent should be as neutral as possible. I don't need to be reminded that the characters are actually speaking French but the actors are speaking English for the sake of convenience.
... intriguing point. So you feel that when the French characters are speaking English, it is more in the sense that the audience is hearing it in English, as opposed to them actually speaking English? The question brings into play a whole matter about the nature of dialogue and the "diegesis," so to speak (kind of like how there is diegetic and non-diegetic music, or at times quasi-diegetic music that blends the two). Yeah, I think what he meant is something like what we see at the beginning of The Hunt for Red October. Connery and crew are speaking Russian but after a while there is a transition and you can assume it's just a way to avoid subtitles but the characters are "still" speaking Russian. We just hear it in English.
On a side ntoe I must admit that I was surprised by Oscar Isaac. He speaks french very well.
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Post by mecano04 on Jan 30, 2019 22:45:33 GMT
Overall it is a nice movie but I feel that it isn't for everyone. Kinda like Roma, it's a nice experience but not everybody will like the pace, music and camera work. I also disliked the (as Jep Gambardella said it) At some point they should have stuck with one option only. Otherwise it was quite enjoyable. Solid 8/10.
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Post by hi224 on Jan 31, 2019 18:34:40 GMT
Directed by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls). Willem Dafoe plays Vincent, which is a strange casting choice, since he is 63 years old and Vincent died when he was 37.
Sounds pretty good. I will certainly be watching it this weekend.
well the directions awe inducing.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Feb 1, 2019 8:25:43 GMT
... intriguing point. So you feel that when the French characters are speaking English, it is more in the sense that the audience is hearing it in English, as opposed to them actually speaking English? The question brings into play a whole matter about the nature of dialogue and the "diegesis," so to speak (kind of like how there is diegetic and non-diegetic music, or at times quasi-diegetic music that blends the two). Yeah, I think what he meant is something like what we see at the beginning of The Hunt for Red October. Connery and crew are speaking Russian but after a while there is a transition and you can assume it's just a way to avoid subtitles but the characters are "still" speaking Russian. We just hear it in English.
On a side ntoe I must admit that I was surprised by Oscar Isaac. He speaks french very well.
... thanks for the example. I am not sure if that was the intention of the English dialogue in At Eternity's Gate, but it is something to consider.
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Post by mecano04 on Feb 1, 2019 22:18:02 GMT
Yeah, I think what he meant is something like what we see at the beginning of The Hunt for Red October. Connery and crew are speaking Russian but after a while there is a transition and you can assume it's just a way to avoid subtitles but the characters are "still" speaking Russian. We just hear it in English.
On a side note I must admit that I was surprised by Oscar Isaac. He speaks french very well.
... thanks for the example. I am not sure if that was the intention of the English dialogue in At Eternity's Gate, but it is something to consider. I'm not sure it was the intention either, I was more trying to support what Jep said.
Personally, as someone who has french for native and everyday language yet who can still speak english I had no issue understanding or following what was said.
My issue was more that it felt annoying to go back and forth without really having any real excuse or reason to not stick with one option (instead of the 3 things listed by Jep). Maybe it was to fit with the atmosphere.
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Post by hi224 on Feb 2, 2019 2:26:07 GMT
Directed by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Before Night Falls). Willem Dafoe plays Vincent, which is a strange casting choice, since he is 63 years old and Vincent died when he was 37.
Sounds pretty good. I will certainly be watching it this weekend.
he really is an actors director.
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Post by Vits on Feb 19, 2019 21:01:53 GMT
7/10 gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. The shaky cam bothered me too. Many directors have proven that it can be done in a way where the viewer can still make out the image. That wasn't the case here. The other things you mentioned didn't bother me. What did bother me was how some scenes consisted on just close-ups and POV shots. This worked in THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY because of the main character's state. This is a movie about a painter! Why not be more visually creative? Sure, there are wide shots in other scenes, but it's mostly whenever VAN GOGH is walking/running through fields i.e. moments that don't move the story forward. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent. But the characters spoke French at first and then switched to English. Before watching the movie, I knew that VAN GOGH was Dutch. Whenever he spoke French in the movie, it sounded like he was hesitating. Like he didn't speak it fluently. I assumed that the French people picked up on that and started to speak English for his benefit. The ones that didn't (like the woman at the beginning that he asked to pose for a painting or the teacher and her students) didn't know him personally. After watching the movie, I researched this. It turns out that He didn't speak French fluently I.R.L.
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Post by Jep Gambardella on Feb 19, 2019 21:45:05 GMT
7/10 gtf out of here with your shaky camera and bizarre angles and lens glare and scenes where half the frame is out of focus. The shaky cam bothered me too. Many directors have proven that it can be done in a way where the viewer can still make out the image. That wasn't the case here. The other things you mentioned didn't bother me. What did bother me was how some scenes consisted on just close-ups and POV shots. This worked in THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY because of the main character's state. This is a movie about a painter! Why not be more visually creative? Sure, there are wide shots in other scenes, but it's mostly whenever VAN GOGH is walking/running through fields i.e. moments that don't move the story forward. Not to mention the utterly idiotic convention of having French characters speaking English with a horribly forced French accent. Either speak French and put English subtitles, or hire an actor who can speak English with a neutral accent. But the characters spoke French at first and then switched to English. Before watching the movie, I knew that VAN GOGH was Dutch. Whenever he spoke French in the movie, it sounded like he was hesitating. Like he didn't speak it fluently. I assumed that the French people picked up on that and started to speak English for his benefit. The ones that didn't (like the woman at the beginning that he asked to pose for a painting or the teacher and her students) didn't know him personally. After watching the movie, I researched this. It turns out that He didn't speak French fluently I.R.L.
That is possible, but I am not sure there were many French who could speak English in the late 19th century. In fact even today the French are not known for their mastery of foreign languages!
As for his knowledge of French, I don't know how well he spoke it, but at one point he started writing his letters to his own brother in French instead of Dutch, so he must have been reasonably fluent.
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Post by THawk on Jun 23, 2019 0:46:57 GMT
Such a good, good movie. A work of art it many different ways, understated yet captivating and profound, both about art, God, and who we are as human beings. Some of Defoe's best. Highly recommend it to those looking for something different.
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