The Secrets of Nefertiti's Bust
Image - Riverstone Pictures
My journey in to exploring the Deleuzian taxonony of cinema began with trying to understand how cinema could represent or portray art. Co-incidentally this was with regard to impressionist art. Vincent van Gogh does not fit neatly into the style of impressionism or post-impressionism but there are overlaps and strong connections. Therefore, it was with enthusiasm I took a look at the 2018 film, At Eternity's Gate and it's director, Schnabel's efforts at approaching a well covered subject, Van Gogh.
Would Schnabel use this medium of cinema to bring us closer to the truth of expression as Van Gogh saw it?
Watch the Trailer
Image - Riverstone Pictures
Introduction
What I am looking for.
I have almost avoided watching this film for about 5 years. I was aware of it's release, but due to the subject matter (van Gogh) and my Master's project (Apples and Oranges) I wanted to be careful not to fill my head with other peoples visions and interpretation of Van Gogh as I was planning a depiction of the artist.
I have carefully chosen to engage with his art work, visiting the Musee d'Orsay, the National Art Gallery in London and a travelling exhibition to Canberra to the National Gallery there. I had read the letters between the two brothers, and attendied Van Gogh Alive in Sydney. My one indulgence was to watch Loving Vincent, the 2017 painting animated film.
I was interested in know if Schnabel would bring any cinematographic techniques to bear on the audience, and if so, what would the effects be. How would he show what was happening in Vincent's mind? How would his neurodiversity manifest? How would the paintings be depicted?
With so much written, commented on, turned over and over for a century and more, how could Schnabel use cinema to reveal some new truth about Vincent?
Would considering this work through a Deleuzian lens allow me to understand the experience of the film?
"Our intention in this movie was to make a movie that was not about Van Gogh but it was as if though you were Van Gogh"
- Julian Schnabel
en plein air
Opening
Schnabel puts us inside Vincent's head from the beginning. First we hear his monlogue about wanting to be part of society, then the opening scene, the opening shot, first person, steadycam, looking through Vincent's eyes. We feel immediately that he is out of step with the world as he approaches the milkmaid to ask her to pose for him. It is awkward, intrusive, she is suspicious, a little afraid.
Then, we know we are in France; but he does not immediately speak French. He is the outsider in many ways. (Schnabel, introduces english as the language of the film, but places us culturally in that world. He effectively switches Vincent's native dutch for english)
"Je vous faire un dessin de vous"
(Vincent's poorly articulated phrasing in another way is the declaration of Schnabel that this is his sketch of Vincent )
"From the dark opening of the worn insides of the shoes the toilsome tread of the worker stares forth. .."
- Martin Heidegger on A Pair of Shoes
When Vincent gets to the south of france (Arles), and journeys into the countryside with his paints and easel, our subjective experience of being Vincent intensifies.
It begins with Van Gogh trapped in his meagre dwelling by the weather, and he paints, inside, his shoes. Schnabel capures here the struggle, but also the compulsion, to be an artist
Frame
The frame (Deleuze) that Schnabel presents us with is that of the close confines of the room. It structures this space as closed system. There is Vincent, the stony floor, the grey light from outside defining characters, the muted cold grey, blue and brown colours. The sounds fade to white noise. (The jerking of the steadcam is almost the only dynamic, until we experience the colours on the canvas, reds and yellows that don't exist).
This frame in its tightness indicates the greater totality beyond the walls, the ‘the whole’ of the world beyond, the world that made the shoes, the bleakness of the countryside, and the odd memories that we the audience carry of the actual painting, and versions thereof, that sit in galleries around the world. (This feels like a kinda of auto-neuro image. )
This other absolute out-of-field (a more “spiritual/mental” elsewhere: Vincent’s exhaustion, past, vocation, the historical Van Gogh, even the museum-world where the boots painting lives), is another dimension that the white noise pushes us towards, the revealing to ourselves, our own thoughts.
Shot
The shots in this scene move between the various objects, paints, Vincent's focus on the canvas, his hands, and are characterised by the shallow depth of field, the steadicam movement, the closeness to the lens, in such as way as to trasnform the room from being the perception-imge to the affectation container (of creativity).
The sonosign of the background noise of the winds outside sets us up to shift from the movement image (Vincent observes his shoes, has an idea, and decides to paint them) to the time-image regime, where Vincent (and us the audience) move to a contemplative mood.
Montage
This is sequence over about 2 minutes moves between shots of the objects in the room, Vincent's concentrated efforts, the canvas and settles on the vibrancy of the red and yellow boots.
We know that Vincent worked quickly and Schnabel gives us a sense of that with the steadicam movements. There is a jagged rhythm to the painting process as thick layers are scooped on to the canvas.
This montage reveals a truth in how Vincent sees his world, and invites us in to that process. This will become a more intense experience for us as the film unfurls.
In Cinema 2 Deluze tells us that memory is virtual and coexists with the present and as such when the boots appear at the end of the montage, we experience a jump:
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We are aware of the present perception, that is to say “Vincent paints boots in a room.”
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There is a collective virtual memory: “Van Gogh’s A-pair-of-boots painting (museum, reproductions, art history).”
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Now there is the actualisation: our memory becomes an image now, overlaying the film, but knowing what the boots on the floor look like and that the ones on the canvas are Vincent's truth
This scene connects us, now in the 21st century, to being as Vicent was at the end of the 19th. This is where the room (frame) connects to the-whole, where that includes us and our memories. So this scene can be read as producing a recollection-image in us, the viewer, not just showing an object in the diegesis.
Van Gogh Museum. September-November 1886 “Vincent van Gogh - Shoes.” Accessed December 28, 2025. https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0011v1962.
We are experiencing a painting as a crystal image. The actual (the film’s present of painting) and the virtual (the remembered canonical painting) are indiscernible in experience: the spectator sees this painting-being-made and that already-known painting at once...
...We are experiencing time
