At Eternity's Gate Trailer: Willem Dafoe is Vincent van Gogh

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A 63-year old Willem Dafoe brings Vincent van Gogh to life in the trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly director Julian Schnabel's memoir, At Eternity's Gate - even though the real van Gogh only lived to be 37 himself. Then again, Schnabel's film isn't particularly concerned with historical accuracy and instead strives to create (fittingly enough) a post-impressionist portrait of the troubled painter and his life.

The At Eternity's Gate synopsis further acknowledges that Schnabel's biopic (which is only the second non-documentary he's made in a decade) is partly based on "moments that are just plain invented", in addition to van Gogh's letters, "hearsay", and events that most art historians agree actually took place. Schnabel and his cowriters Jean-Claude Carrière (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and Louise Kugelberg thusly eschew the facts, in order to get at the deeper truth about the man who created the oil painting that gave their script its name.

Speaking of which: van Gogh finished painting "Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate)" just a couple months before he committed suicide and Dafoe's casting is meant to reflect how the artist may have seen himself, at the time of his death. Schnabel's approach was mostly well-received by the critics who saw At Eternity's Gate at the Venice International Film Festival this past week (with Variety in particular singling out Dafoe for "his greatest role since Jesus Christ"). As such, CBS Films has gone and released the movie's trailer online now (see below), in an effort to capitalize on that positive buzz.

While Dafoe is already generating Oscar buzz thanks to his acclaimed performance as Vincent van Gogh, At Eternity's Gate's supporting cast is nothing to scoff at, either. Their ranks include Star Wars' Oscar Isaac as van Gogh's contemporary Paul Gauguin, Rupert Friend (Homeland) as Vincent's younger brother Theo, and Emmanuelle Seigner (Venus in Fur) as Madame Ginoux, the basis for van Gogh's "The Woman from Arles" paintings. Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal), Niels Arestrup (War Horse), and Schnabel's own Diving Bell star Mathieu Amalric also play key roles.

As it happens, van Gogh's final days were only just investigated in last year's Oscar-nominated Loving Vincent - a film that attempts to capture the artist's nature through oil painting animation. So far, though, critics appear to agree that Schnabel's memoir is both different and successful enough in its methods to justify two quasi-experimental van Gogh biopics hitting the scene in as many years. Either way, At Eternity's Gate certainly looks like something worth checking out, when it hits the arthouse scene this fall.