Vincent & Theo
"Vincent & Theo" demonstrates the unique style of Robert Altman, the director of such marvelous modern classics as "M*A*S*H," "Nashville," "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and many others, but who also gave us such incomprehensible pap as "Quintet" and "H.E.A.L.T.H."He is a filmmaker marked by his ups and downs because they seem to have been so far up and so far down.
That, unfortunately has caused Hollywood money men to abandon him, the result being that he has had trouble developing financing for his next project.
At first glance, Altman and Vincent van Gogh may seem ill-matched - so much so that even Altman admits he at first had no interest in doing the film. Yet, there is something about the life of van Gogh that has inspired Altman to do his best work in some years.
A large part of this has to do with Altman's eccentric approach, which somehow clicks perfectly with his eccentric subject.
The film opens with a modern documentary-style set-piece, the auctioning off of a van Gogh painting at Christie's for literally millions of British pounds. We still hear the auctioneer escalating the ridiculous bidding as we meet Vincent and Theo van Gogh in one of their seemingly endless arguments about the former's poverty-ridden life and his inability to sell anything he paints. Further, the scene has the Dutch van Gogh brothers speaking with thickly British accents - and darned if Vincent isn't downright cockney, even resorting to "bloody" as an expletive.
The story follows both brothers, together and apart, as Vincent pursues his art and his demons and Theo tries to make a career and a family for himself. In the scenes with Vincent, Altman's fascinating design repeatedly makes literal van Gogh's haunting canvas images, whether dark or sunny. And Altman's trademark overlapping dialogue is kept to a minimum as silence enhances the momentum of many moments.
Further, he has managed a real coup in the casting of Tim Roth as Vincent, as the actor truly embodies a van Gogh the audience will at once envy, pity and wonder about. Paul Rhys is also good as Theo, though his is a more foppish, less flamboyant role.
Altman tends to let his constantly moving camera move a little too much at times, closing in on his actors, then slowly pulling back again, often to no apparent purpose. But there is no question that "Vincent & Theo" should put the director back on the map - and maybe persuade Hollywood's money men to give his next project another look.
The PG-13 film, which contains nudity, sex, profanity, drugs and violence (an R rating might not have been out of line here), is also a nice companion piece to Paul Cox's recent "Vincent," a documentary that was, like "Vincent & Theo," based on the correspondence between the two brothers.