Movie review - "Lust for Life"

Movie review number18

PLOT

This movie stars Kirk Douglas as the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh and also stars Anthony Quinn as French artist Paul Gauguin.  The movie starts with Vincent wanting to enter the clergy but they don't want him.  But they change their mind after a passioned plea from Vincent and send him to a tiny mining village in Belgium, full of mud, potatoes and poverty.  This is where Vincent starts painting and drawing very dark and almost depressing pictures.  Vincent then gets kicked out of the job and moves back in with his parents in Holland and falls in love with a cousin whose husband recenlty died.  That causes more problems..... and he then moves to France to learn to paint.  He then meets the Impressionists in Paris and that's when he starts using bright colours in his paintings!!!  

Vincent then moves to the south of France and tries to set up an Artists colony, and shares a house with Gauguin but they get on each other nerves and start arguing.  Later, they have a HUGE row, Gauguin stomps off and Vincent cuts his ear off!!!!  Gauguin moves on, and Vincent goes into an Assylum.

He keeps painting though, and eventually is released from the Assylum and moves to Auvers sur Oise just north of Paris ...... he stays in the Auberge de Ravoux and continues painting...... until he dies - in the movie that's portrayed as an epileptic seizure.  You're obviously not paying attention....!!!  We checked, and in the movie Vincent dies by gunshot in the cornfields!!!  (oops!)

Ed's note - I've been to Auvers sur Oise, trains leave from Gare du Nord in Paris.  The scene in the movie where Vincent walks down some old steps (away from the church) - the graveyard is opposite that church which is where Vincent and his brother Theo are buried with a cypress tree at the foot of the graves, and on the other side of the wall are the cornfields that he painted.

RECOMMENDED
This is a lovely movie!!!

SCORE 

Beanie says 9 squeaks out of 10!!

RECOMMENDED SCOOBY SNACKS
Corn on the cob with lots of butter!