At Eternity's Gate (2018)

Willem Dafoe: Vincent van Gogh

Photos 

38 more photos

Quotes 

• Vincent Van Gogh : Maybe God made me a painter for people who aren't born yet.

  Priest : Possibly.

  Vincent Van Gogh : It is said, Life is for sowing. The harvest is not here.

• Madman : Are all the painters crazy?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Maybe just the good ones.

• Gaby : Why do you paint this?

  Vincent Van Gogh : What? These flowers.

  Gaby : Why do you paint them?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Don't you find them beautiful?

  Gaby : Well, they are beautiful flowers, no doubt. More beautiful than what you paint.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You think so?

  Gaby : Oh, yes.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Maybe you're right. But these flowers will wither and fade. All flowers do.

  Gaby : I know, everybody knows that.

  Vincent Van Gogh : But mine will resist.

  Gaby : Are you sure?

  Vincent Van Gogh : At least they'll have a chance.

• Dr. Paul Gachet : Why do you paint?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I paint, as a matter of fact, to stop thinking.

  Dr. Paul Gachet : A sort of meditation.

  Vincent Van Gogh : When I paint, I stop thinking.

  Dr. Paul Gachet : About what?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I stop thinking, and I feel that I'm a part of everything outside and inside of me. I wanted so much to share what I see.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I hate the fog. I'm tired of this gray light. I'd like to find a new light. For paintings that we haven't yet seen. Bright paintings, painted in sunlight.

  Paul Gauguin : Go south, Vincent.

• Vincent Van Gogh : There's a lot of destruction and failure at the door of a successful picture. I find joy in sorrow. And sorrow is greater than laughter. You know, an angel is not far from those who are sad, and illness can sometimes heal us.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Without painting, I can't live.

  Doctor Felix Ray : I believe you.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I've spent all my life alone, in a room. I need to go out and work to forget myself. I want to be out of control. I need to be in a feverish state. It's called the act of painting for a reason.

• Madman : What do you paint?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Sunlight.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I feel God is nature and nature is beauty.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I think of myself as an exile, a pilgrim on this earth. Jesus said, Turn your heart away from things visible and turn yourself to things invisible.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Sometimes they say I'm mad, but a grain of madness is the best of art.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I'll show what I see to my human brothers who can't see it. It's a privilege. I can give them hope and consolation.

• Doctor Felix Ray : You're confusing people. You're confusing yourself with your paintings.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I am my paintings.

• Paul Gauguin : The impressionists, they're out of it, do you agree? Come on. They only paint their babies in their gardens. They'll never go any further. Seurat confounds painting with science. He's lost himself in optical experiments. There's nothing more to expect from Renoir, Degas, Monet. They repeat themselves. They've given everything they could give.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You don't mean that. You like Degas. You have to say thank you for the paintings you like. Monet's pretty good.

  Paul Gauguin : It's our turn.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I'd like to share my vision with people who can't see what I see the way I see.

  Doctor Felix Ray : Yes, but why?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Because my vision is closer to the reality of the world. I can make people feel what it's like to be alive.

  Doctor Felix Ray : Do you feel like they don't feel alive?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes, I do.

  Doctor Felix Ray : And you think you can make them feel that through painting?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes. Yes, absolutely.

• Paul Gauguin : You have to plan your paintings slowly. What's the rush? Work calmly, slowly. You're indoors, you're not outside in the wind and the noise.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Paintings have to be done in one clear gesture.

  Paul Gauguin : Think about the surface that you're painting on and how the paint will sit on it. You're changing things so fast, you can't even see what you've done.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Paintings have to be painted fast.

  [We see Vincent in an art gallery as he names a number of master painters] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : Painters I look at: Frans Hals, Goya, Velazquez, Veronese, Delacroix. The painters I like all paint fast in one clear gesture, each stroke. You've heard of a stroke of genius? Well, that's what it means.

  Paul Gauguin : You don't even paint that way. You paint fast and you overpaint. Your surface looks like it's made out of clay. It's more like sculpture than painting.

• Vincent Van Gogh : If I couldn't paint, I would murder someone.

• Vincent Van Gogh : An artist...

  Dr. Paul Gachet : Yes?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I thought an artist had to teach how to look at the world. But I don't think that anymore. Now I just think about my relationship to eternity.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I paint with my qualities and faults.

• Paul Gauguin : We have to start a revolution. Do you understand?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes.

  Paul Gauguin : We do. Us, our generation. We have to change entirely the relation between painting and what you call nature. Between painting and reality because painted reality is its own reality.

• [first lines] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : I just want to be one of them. I would like to sit down with them and have a drink and talk about anything. I'd like them to give me some tobacco, a glass of wine, or even just ask me, "How are you today?" And I would answer, and we would talk. And from time to time I'd make a sketch of one of them as a gift. They would accept it, maybe, and keep it somewhere, and a woman would smile at me and ask, "Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat? A piece of ham, some cheese, or maybe a fruit?"

• Vincent Van Gogh : [reading Gauguin's letter]  The winter is always dangerous to you.

• Priest : I don't want to hurt your feelings, but don't you see that this painting is, how can I say, unpleasant? Ugly?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Why would God give me a gift to paint ugly and disturbing things?

• Dr. Paul Gachet : Maybe what you are saying is that your gift to the world is painting.

  Vincent Van Gogh : If not, what good is an artist?

• Vincent Van Gogh : Jesus said, If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.

• Priest : Tell me frankly, because I'd like to understand. Why do you say you are a painter?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Because I paint. I love painting. I have to paint. Always been a painter, that I know of.

• Vincent Van Gogh : There's something inside me. I don't know what it is. What I see, nobody else sees and sometimes it frightens me. I think I'm losing my mind.

• Theo Van Gogh : They told me what happened. Please tell me, how do you feel?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I feel so well with you next to me. So well, I'd like to die like this.

  Theo Van Gogh : When we were little, I used to climb into bed with you. Remember?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes, you did, when it was getting cold.

• [last lines] 

  Vincent Van Gogh : Oh God, will you receive your son?

• Vincent Van Gogh : When facing a flat landscape, I see nothing but eternity. Am I the only one to see it? Existence can't be without reason.

• Paul Gauguin : I'm telling you, you have to look inside.

  Vincent Van Gogh : You keep saying "look inside." I get it, I do. You keep repeating yourself. What do you think I'm doing? I don't invent the picture. I don't need to invent the picture. I find it already in nature. I just have to free it.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I took a razor and I cut off one of my ears, yes. I cut it off, one of my ears. Blood all over the place. No one else did it, I did it. I wanted to give it to Gauguin with my apologies. Why? God knows.

• Priest : So, you believe that God gave you this gift because He wants to keep you in misery?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Huh. I never thought about it that way.

• Paul Gauguin : I want to get as far away from these people as possible. I'm going to Madagascar.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Madagascar? But what about Japan?

  Paul Gauguin : No, no, Madagascar. It's an island. It's a big one. In between Africa and India. Or even further, some remote island where they've never heard about painting, about Paris or schools. Somewhere where I can create a new vision, a new way of painting, far away from all systems and theories. Real freedom. I'd like to be calm and take my time, alone, forget about the rest of the world and just - paint.

• Gaby : You should make a painting of me.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Why not?

  Gaby : If you paint me, I would stay young forever, maybe.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I can even make you look younger.

  Gaby : No, it wouldn't be fair.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Look at me. Please.

  Girl on the Road : Yes?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Don't be afraid! Just stand still!

  Girl on the Road : I am standing still. What do you want?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Please don't move!

  Girl on the Road : Why?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I want to make a sketch of you.

  Girl on the Road : A sketch?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes. It is a drawing. I want to make a drawing of you.

  Girl on the Road : Why?

• Paul Gauguin : Why do you always have to paint from nature?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I feel lost if I don't have something to look at. I need something to see. There's so much to see. Every time I look, I see something I've never seen before.

• Priest : Do you feel angry sometimes?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes.

  Priest : And what do you do then?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I go out, look at a blade of grass or a branch of a fig tree in order to calm down.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I'm free to go?

  Priest : I think we've done all we can for you here.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I hope I'm ready.

• Theo Van Gogh : The doctors told me what happened. Please tell me, how do you feel?

  Vincent Van Gogh : I feel so well with you next to me. So well, I think I'd like to die like this.

  Theo Van Gogh : When we were little, I used to climb into bed with you.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes, you did, when it was getting cold.

• Vincent Van Gogh : I believe I have a menacing spirit around me. An invisible being. I feel it, I don't see it. He speaks to me and threatens me. And all he wants to do is plunge a knife into my heart. I saw him and I tried to cut him out of myself.

  Doctor Felix Ray : So that's the reason why you cut off your ear. Your vision of the world, as you say, is quite frightening, isn't it?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Yes. I'm terrified he'll come back.

• Gaby : You should wash yourself sometimes. At least once a week.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Do I look dirty?

  Gaby : You smell terrible. You're not bad looking. If you just cleaned up a little, you might even be handsome.

  Vincent Van Gogh : If I was clean, would you find me attractive?

  Gaby : Maybe.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Would you stay with me here if I gave you 50 Francs?

  Gaby : You don't have 50 Francs.

• Md Ginoux : Does he write well at least?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Oh, yes, very well. Some of the lines aren't very clear, but - I like that.

  Md Ginoux : Why?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Because I like mystery, and Shakespeare is more mysterious than any other writer.

  Md Ginoux : Well, when I read a book, I like to understand what's written.

• Md Ginoux : What are you reading today? The Bible?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Uh, no, Shakespeare.

  Md Ginoux : How did you say?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. He's an English writer.

  Md Ginoux : Do you know him?

  Vincent Van Gogh : No, he lived a long time ago.

  Md Ginoux : Is he any good?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Oh, yes.

  Md Ginoux : What does he write about?

  Vincent Van Gogh : About everything. About men and women, gods and kings, about love and hate.

• Vincent Van Gogh : From time to time, I feel like I'm losing my mind. Yes, my mind goes out of me, I'm telling you. It goes out of me.

  Theo Van Gogh : What do you mean?

  Vincent Van Gogh : They say that I scream in the streets, that I cry, that I put black paint on my face to scare the children. But, I don't remember anything. Anything except the darkness and anxiety.

• Vincent Van Gogh : Theo, sometimes I have visions.

  Theo Van Gogh : Who do you see?

  Vincent Van Gogh : It's hard to say.

  Theo Van Gogh : Ghosts? I don't know.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Flowers, sometimes, and also angels, human beings. It's confusing.

• Vincent Van Gogh : When I look at nature, I see more clearly, the tie that unites us all. A vibrating energy, speaking in God's voice. Sometimes it's so intense, I lose consciousness.

• Paul Gauguin : What do you mean?

  Vincent Van Gogh : What do you mean what do I mean?

• Paul Gauguin : What you paint, what you do belongs to you. You don't need to copy anything.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I don't copy.

  Vincent Van Gogh : I know, but why don't you paint just what's in your mind? What your brain sees?

  Vincent Van Gogh : Because the essence of nature is beauty.

• Vincent Van Gogh : The faster I paint, the better I feel.

• Madman : I'm an army man. I was a soldier.

  Vincent Van Gogh : Are all soldiers crazy?

  Madman : Oh, no, soldiers are not crazy, but officers are. All the officers are insane.