Andrei Rublev | Oil Painting Express

10 Movies You Should See About Artists: #9 - Lust for Life

January

2010

Lust for Life, Movie Poster, 1956

Lust for Life

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn

Release: 1956

Lust for Life stars Kirk Douglas and presents the career of Vincent van Gogh, including the influence of his friendships with painters Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Gauguin (a part which won Anthony Quinn an Oscar). Although melodramatic at times, the film presents a surprisingly honest portrayal of the artist's life – his live-in relationship with a prostitute, his mental illness, and his suicide are all represented in a fullness that you might not expect from a movie released in 1956.

Sitting to watch this movie, I figured there wouldn't be anything further from the last movie on the list. After all, Andrei Rublev is a fairly inaccessible Soviet era Russian art film, while Lust for Life is a lavish Hollywood biopic. And on first viewing, my expectations were met. Where Andrei Rublev relished its artist's subject more than it celebrated his work and pushed the painter to the sidelines of his own namesake film, Lust for Life savors van Gogh's larger-than-life status. When young van Gogh argues with his instructors in the opening scenes, insisting that he passionately wants nothing more than to become a minister, the movie feels almost too self-aware – it knows that the audience already knows where this story is going and that young Vincent will fail in religious life.

10 Movies You Should See About Artists: #10 - Andrei Rublev

January

2010

Andrei Rublev

Starring: Anatoly Solonitsyn, Ivan Lapikov

Release: 1971

The first film on the list (which is not ranked; these artist portraits are presented in no particular order) is Andrei Rublev (1966), about the medieval icon portrait painter and Russian Orthodox saint of the same name. Little is known about Rublev, who died in the early 15th century, so the film's director, Andrei Tarkovsky, took the slim facts and expanded from there. Initially the film's religious and political content led the Soviet government to squash its release, but over the next seven years, cut versions made their way to the Cannes Film Festival and throughout the Soviet Union. It was many years before the film was available in its totality – and quite a totality it is, at about three and a half hours long.

My husband studied Andrei Rublev back in college, and I was wary when, before we watched the movie, he announced, "I'm going to warn you – it's a little…tangential. And long." Obviously, a warning like that is unsettling and cryptic to say the least, but it's actually pretty on target.