Most actors lucky enough to work with Willem Dafoe know they also run the risk of being upstaged by the 63-year-old actor.
An artist through and through, Dafoe has a talent for disappearing into roles. But his range — evident in everything from David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” and Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” to popcorn flicks such as “Spider-Man” and “John Wick” — combine with his innate sensitivity to net him attention regardless of who he’s playing, as when he inhabited a Kissimmee, Fla., hotel manager in last year’s critically acclaimed “The Florida Project.”
The performance netted him his third Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor, but truly, the Appleton, Wis., native is at ease in both indie films and blockbusters, as audiences can see in DC’s latest superhero flick “Aquaman” (opening Dec. 21) or hear as he narrates the dark, edgy “Vox Lux” (opening Dec. 7, following its red carpet screening at the Denver Film Festival).
Dafoe returns to the arthouse, quite literally, as Vincent van Gogh in “At Eternity’s Gate.” The film is directed by longtime Dafoe friend Julian Schnabel, a painter who had his directorial debut in 1996’s “Basquiat.” As such, Schnabel doesn’t so much use “At Eternity’s Gate” to present a biopic about the legendary Dutch Post-Impressionist as present a visual reverie about the obsessive joy and sorrow of the artistic process.
And despite brief turns by Oscar Isaac (as buddy and artistic peer Paul Gaugin), Rupert Friend (as Van Gogh’s brother Theo) and Mads Mikkelsen (as a priest), Schnabel wisely chooses to hand over the film to Dafoe.
It helps that Van Gogh — presented here in unvarnished, deeply human hues — was an inarguable genius. Dafoe cops to being a humble craftsman, but that term has often been applied to him, too.
Here’s our conversation in advance of the film’s Denver opening Nov. 21.
Q: How did your role as Vincent van Gogh come about?
A: Julian and I have known each other for 30 years, so we check in with each other. When I heard he was thinking about doing a movie about Van Gogh I started sniffing around. I think he started writing something with Jean Claude Carrière (a French novelist and screenwriter), but he wasn’t quite sure he was going to do the movie until he reached a certain point and thought he had found his Van Gogh.
Q: And that’s where you came in?
A: We’re friends, but there was a little courtship because it wasn’t just a traditional film, (in which) it gets financed and then you go out to actors and that sort of thing. He is primarily a painter, but also a filmmaker, so he’s initiating projects and trying to figure out if this was something he wanted to pursue. Not in an industry sort of way, but as an artist. So I was aware of it, but I didn’t want to push him on it. I kind of threw my hat in the ring, and I don’t know if this is just post-film publicity, but he’s saying I was always the guy he was thinking of.
Q: What’s your personal relationship with Van Gogh’s art? And what did you bring to it in terms of that?
A: Well, there are two questions there. What I bring to it is my life. Myself. You know? My being. What I always want to make clear when I talk about the movie is that it’s not a traditional biopic. For me, it’s very special. Often when there’s something that can be construed at all as a biopic — like about a musician or a painter or a dancer or anything like that — (filmmakers) often build a psychological portrait to explain away their genius or try to set up why they’re important. This film doesn’t really try to do that. It really deals with the art itself. The painting itself. The process of making something, of being an artist.
Q: Certainly this isn’t the first film to take that approach.
A: Other films do that, but it always kind of takes a back seat. Yeah, sometimes the actor learns how to dance or sing or paint, but it’s usually about something else, some kind of explanation or reaction to explain how he is. This is quite about what he does, and as Van Gogh says, “I am my paintings.” So if people are curious about Van Gogh, they should look at his paintings! That’s the key. He is his art. He said it over and over again.
Q: I really appreciated that despite the usual narratives about Van Gogh, this film didn’t have a feeling of tragic inevitability to it. It had room to breathe.
A: That’s how it was made, because it was a quite an organic process. (It helps) knowing Julian and being with him in the studio, and having him paint me and being involved in small ways in his other work, his other films. He goes to discover something; he doesn’t express something that he already knows.
Q: Did you have conversations about each scene before the camera rolled?
A: No, no conversations. We painted, we walked, we did other things. It was joyous and made with a lot of love. There wasn’t a depressing moment in there at all. Of course, (Van Gogh) had a very difficult life, but also we’re portraying a part of it. What we’re dealing with is a time of his life — yes, he had many challenges, and yes, he was haunted by visions, and he had trouble reconciling these kinds of joyous episodes with a depression of how to fit them into the earthly work. But when I was painting and learning things, I was in those landscapes, and we were using some of his words because he was so articulate in his letters to Theo. He expressed so much with such sincerity and emotion. So that was all there. And we’re portraying a period where he was incredibly prolific. He was painting a painting a day (near the end of his life). And that doesn’t save him, but it’s all there in his writing, even the very day that he died, or the day before he was shot. He was quite ecstatic.
Q: What do you hope audiences get from it? A different impression of Van Gogh and his work?
A: I think the idea is to have an experience. (It’s) just like when (Van Gogh) talks about painting: He doesn’t think. Thinking in itself is not a bad thing, but to be free, and to be conversing with nature or conversing with a higher power or a different way of seeing, that’s what really hooks us up to wonder. And I think we’re all striving for that. Not as a cure for any kind of dissatisfaction we have with our lives, but to really live our lives. To wake up. And even as he struggles, he also knows deeply the beauty of nature. He feels great connection to a god. So that’s thrilling.
Q: It’s one of those films that does a lot with imagery. The dialogue often feels incidental.
A: And it’s sometimes done in the first person, so you’re kind of in it. The way it’s shot, you get to feel like him. Of course, I’m standing in for him. But you’re coming with me and you’re painting with me and you’re walking in those woods with me. That wasn’t a conscious decision. That’s just how Julian led our collecting of material and our setting up of events. Hopefully the audience can experience that with us. I mean, I’ve done this movie and I’ve learned to paint. Am I a great painter now? (That’s) kind of not the point. Do I have great knowledge and can I talk at great length about Van Gogh’s art? No. But I have a deep feeling for his words and his art and some of the events — some invented, some imagined, some based on fact — that we inhabit in our story. That’s the point.
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