Vincent & Theo

Starring: Tim Roth, Paul Rhys

Release: 1990

If you’ve been following this list, right now you might be thinking, “Wait, another Van Gogh movie?” Yes, Vincent & Theo (1990) traces the relationship and lives of brothers Vincent (played by Tim Roth) and Theo (played by Paul Rhys) Van Gogh, the oil portrait artist and his art dealer brother. The film follows the brothers’ turbulent but supportive relationship, as it also documents their individual struggles with mental deterioration. Where Lust for Life presented a dignified and sanitized version of this descent, Vincent & Theo is much more honest and brutal. Vincent’s mental illness is well known, but Theo also battled with mental deterioration caused by syphilis, and the film represents these struggles with a frankness that can be downright scary.

As it emphasizes the inner lives of the portrait painting artist and his brother, the film emphasizes the connection between those inner lives and artistic passion.

Vincent’s art and everyday life overlap, as he licks paint off of an original oil art canvas and paints the faces of the prostitutes that he and portrait painting artist Paul Gauguin befriend in Provence. Theo, similarly, although he dealt not in creating but in selling, playfully finger paints with rouge on his mistress’s legs and surrounds himself with canvases throughout his home. Art is incorporated not only into the professional parts of their lives but the mundane, ordinary parts as well.

Unsurprisingly, then, art and its impact on their relationship with one another play a key role in their respective declines as well. Vincent’s final suicide attempt comes as he is in the field where he had already worked on a number of landscape portraits, and the final shots of Theo, then in the last stages of syphilitic dementia, show him screaming for his oil painting portrait artist brother who died the year before him. For both brothers, at the end of their lives, when very little normalcy exists anymore, art remains a constant.

What makes this film so unique – and what makes it a fine movie to end the list on – is how effectively it personalizes the artistic process and final original oil portraits. For both men, art is a visceral, physical part of their lives. It is as basic a part of their lives as breathing and eating, and this film gives the viewer a small experience of that unique life.

Don't miss the other blog posts in my series on movies about artists!

10 Movies You Should See About Artists:

• #10 - Andrei Rublev
• #9 - Lust for Life
• #8 - Goya's Ghosts
• #7 - Pollock
• #6 - Basquiat
• #5 - Girl with a Pearl Earring
• #4 - The Agony and the Ecstasy
• #3 - Frida
• #2 - Artemisia