Original subtitles

Paris, with its Eiffel Tower, I would paint it tonight, I so liked painting at night,

but now, that's life is over.

It's a record year, Van Gogh at the summit of the art market, more than 82 million dollars

for the portrait of Dr. Gachet at Jugeir at Christie's.

1992, 82 million dollars for one of my portraits of Dr. Gachet, yet I had made just one sale

during my lifetime.

Now, my paintings are in all the big museums.

Here, at the Orsay Museum in Paris, there are about 20.

People come from everywhere to see them, for the paintings and for the legend too.

My painter's legend.

Cut here, a crazy man, one who committed suicide at the age of 37.

And now, the most expensive painter of the world.

Sometimes I wonder if most people aren't more interested in all that than in my painting.

Hopefully, there are exceptions.

He is different.

His name is Peter Knap.

He is a photographer and a filmmaker.

He's passionate about my painting.

I like following him to the places where I used to paint, to Overe and the others.

I remember this picture.

I was satisfied with it.

The church, practically violet against the pure cobalt sky.

The windows, just patches of ultramarine.

The roof, violet and orange in places.

I like her too.

Her name is Ellen Bakois.

I noticed that women find me a lot more interesting since I died.

I think I scared them off when I was alive.

I was too nervous and tormented.

Ellen's been working here for over a year, all alone in the basement of the Van Gogh Museum.

The green boxes contain all my drawings.

And in another room, they have all my letters to my brother Theo.

900 letters.

I wrote Theo almost every day.

Every day she tries to find the reasons for my anxiety and troubled life.

And I am very difficult to read.

My writing is a mess, with no punctuation.

In very broken French.

Yes, when I began my life as a painter, I decided to write in French.

The double row of flowers is pink and green on one side.

And orange, with hardly any leaves on the other.

In the midst, a dahlia, white.

A little pomegranate.

Ellen works in a museum in Holland that's named after me.

More than a million and a half visitors every year.

I spent the two last months of my life here.

In Auvers-sur-Roise, north of Paris.

I was buried here, after only 37 years of life.

It turns out, action!

Peter lives here too.

I don't think it's a coincidence.

He's making a film about me, about my painting.

And I like following him when he goes to the places I lived and used to paint.

I know this study well.

My first work in Auvers.

Writing to Theo, I told him that I found the village of Auvers very beautiful.

Peter says he realized, while filming my pictures, that I painted the distant background at high level.

But I looked down on the foreground, as if I was seeing it from above.

As for the horizon, he noticed that I tended to set it very high within the frame.

That makes for what he calls a wide angle effect, that draws the viewer into the picture.

And surrounds him.

My dear Theo, I just sent you three large drawings, as well as a few more smaller ones.

Theo, my brother.

Far more than my brother.

Sometimes, when I was painting those pictures, I felt we were doing them together.

I could never have painted them without Theo.

Theo was an art dealer.

He made a good living.

He allowed me to devote myself entirely to my art.

He sent me money, canvas, paper, tubes of paint, everything I needed to paint, to work.

That was our agreement.

And I produced.

I felt driven to do good work.

Usually, I included a sketch of painting in progress in the letters I sent Theo.

Then when the picture was finished, I sent it to him.

And then I moved on.

I set another canvas on the easel.

That's what I was here for, you see.

I was on this earth to paint.

To paint right till the end.

And in less than a century, I became a myth.

When all I wanted was to become a painter.

Don't think it was easy.

I spent a long time finding my way.

Me.

The Dutchman.

The preacher's son.

When I was only 16, I became an art dealer in Amsterdam, London and Paris.

Then I became a preacher, like my father, in Belgium.

I used to preach to the destitute, to miners and labourers.

I talked to them and read them the Bible.

I enjoyed it.

Because I like people.

But it didn't last.

They thought I was overzealous.

They thanked me and told me to go on my way.

So I did the one thing I could do, the one thing I really wanted to do, deep down.

I drew, I drew and I drew.

I was 27 by then.

I varied my approaches.

At first I copied works by artists I admired.

Me especially.

Yes.

I copied me a lot.

Then I took the plunge.

I began painting in oils.

Pictures didn't just come to me at first.

I worked in a very academic way.

I did multiple studies to come to grips with my subject.

I was moving on, step by step.

But colour, which made me famous later on, was still a long way off.

I was still seeing darkly.

In 1886, I joined Théo in Paris.

I was 32 years old.

I had been painting almost constantly for four years then.

Four years and already more than 200 paintings.

And it's here, in Paris, that I made the discovery that was going to change my life.

I discovered colour.

And I started to apply the famous theory of complementary colour by Charles Blanc.

Blanc says that to heighten colours, we must use them with their complement.

Yellow and violet are complementary.

And so are blue and orange, green and red.

I wrote to red.

I wrote to Théo.

If a stroke of red is surrounded by green, the red will become more intense and the painting

will find a natural equilibrium, even if it wasn't in the composition.

I was searching.

I wanted to move forward.

Here's father Tangi.

I'm glad to see him again.

He's the one who sold the paint Théo used to send me.

I painted him twice, against the background of a Japanese print.

Japanese art was our passion.

Japan had been closed off and isolated for so long.

The Japanese word we found was delicate and precise.

And so much about simplicity.

That's what I needed.

A lot of colour and drawing.

No smooth surfaces, just brushstrokes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, I painted like I drew.

And I remember, I was overjoyed.

I had found my path at last.

I was in my painting.

My.

Dear.

Friend.

No.

Come on.

Not that letter.

I know Ellen wants to understand but she shouldn't read what I crossed out.

I only kept this letter for the drawing on the back.

I didn't mean for people to read it.

My dear friend, write to my brother to tell him to keep my paintings at their original price, rather than selling them off cheap.

Ellen tries to figure everything out.

Did I tell you that Ellen and Peter knew each other?

She tells Peter about what she's discovered, or things she's discovered in my letters.

The things I crossed out.

The art market.

It all fascinates her.

The price of paintings.

Who cares?

Really?

All right.

I told Theo I didn't want my pictures to be sold cheaply.

I'd rather the runs sold at all, than have their prices lowered.

With my painter friends, I used to talk about painting, work, color, Gauguin, Signac.

Toulouse Lautrec.

I met them all in Paris with Theo.

They were carrying the Impressionist torch.

They all told me about the south of France, and the light you get there, and the joy of basking in that light.

This was 1888.

I was 35, and I had certainly made more than 400 paintings.

From then on, the machine would get carried away.

During the two short years I had left, I would produce almost as many again.

So, off I went.

Down south.

To a city called Arles.

And in all, I painted.

I painted that yellow light.

I painted it by night.

This vivid yellow and deep blue.

Like golden nuggets against a screen of darkness.

No yellow without blue.

I painted the day.

Yellow.

Sulfur yellow.

Lemon.

Pale lemon.

Gold.

I painted without stopping.

I was searching.

Brighter.

Always brighter.

Dead.

I was obsessed with that high yellow note.

I was tracking it.

Circling it.

Closing in.

Until everything flickered.

Ah.

I've been through these places.

Morning.

Afternoon.

Evening.

In the burning heat.

Sometimes disturbed.

And always alone.

Always.

Better can tread in my footsteps.

But he'll never be alone as I was.

That's when Gauguin and the severed ear incident happened.

So much has been said about it all that I have to tell you the story.

I knew Gauguin from Paris.

That's him.

A self-portrait he gave me.

I admired him as a painter.

And I wanted him to come to Arles and set up a community of artists.

So I wrote to him.

Saying I had rented a house with a room for him.

I asked Theo to write to him too.

And to send him some money.

Gauguin took his time.

Eventually he wrote back.

He couldn't come right away.

But he was assuring me that he wanted to very much.

He delayed.

And then at last he was here in Arles.

I don't think I had ever been so happy.

I was convinced that together we would make strides.

We worked very well together.

Side by side.

Elbow to elbow.

Sometimes on the same subject.

I went through a lot.

But there were problems.

I was highly strong.

I smoked too much.

Drunk too much coffee.

And too much wine.

I don't even know what happened that night.

we probably drunk again we definitely argued then I cut a little piece of my

ear off and in the middle of the night I took this piece of ear to Rachel I liked

Rachel she was close to me she had a warm heart nothing was ever the same

after that people said I was mad the mad redhead they called me so I asked to

be committed to the hospice in St-Rémy en Provence a home for the insane committed

voluntarily and I painted I kept painting like a painting engine I felt I

couldn't stop I couldn't stop I never took a break so I worked I worked flat out

like a bricklayer I worked hard dear Theo the work is going very well I'm

struggling with a picture I started a few days before my illness a reaper the

study is all yellow extremely thickly painted but the subject was beautiful

and simple I see in him the image of death but there's no sadness in this death it

takes place in broad daylight with the Sun flooding everything in the light of pure

gold and I kept myself in the asylum for a whole year why I stayed in the hospital

because it's cheaper than living in a hotel and they left me in peace there I could go

out when I wanted so I could paint sometimes the peaches came to me naturally like in a dream but

sometimes it was terribly laborious as hard as searching for diamond or pearl the olive trees

for example I was struggling to capture them they were silver sometimes with more blue

in them sometimes greenish or bronze it's difficult terribly difficult but I like it so much to work in the

fields after a year in the asylum I felt I was better my old demons were leaving me in peace

well not all the time but more and more often and for longer periods so I told myself that what I had

learned in the south growing in color well I could apply it in the north I could paint the north in the

southern light I talked about this to Theo they who had married Johanna they just had a little boy a

little Vincent named after me but what about me would my brother be able to afford a family as well

as my painting and living expenses Theo suggested that I moved to Auvers-sur-Oise I was now 37 and these

were to be the last two months of my life Auvers was Theo's choice he recommended the doctor who loved

painting and painters the doctor was Dr Gachet the house you see was his that's where he lived I painted

several portraits of the doctor I know Theo he thought the doctor could keep an eye on me I immediately felt

Dr Gachet was a friend he wanted me to paint a lot as therapy I stayed in a small room in a boarding

house I wanted to live cheaply like a bricklayer and the Ravoux family was so nice my room was only

three francs fifty per day and the food was good there I felt good in over and right away and I felt really at

peace among that nature all those fields the tranquility of the green countryside after the merciless beauty of the

south it all put my mind at rest everything suddenly became clear and simple and I kept on drawing of course

those kids are my vision of people and things I need the sketch to imagine the paintings to come it all

begins in the simplicity of growing when there's no more than a line sometimes it becomes a detail at

other times the whole picture I had been painting day after day for nine years without stopping

nine years and over 900 paintings still lives portraits landscapes I worked more and more and more and more

quickly then I knew that my painting was good in over I crossed a new threshold more than 80 paintings in two

months do the math that sometimes three paintings a day an exhausting burning pace I got up early I went to bed late I

repented I walked I walked I walked for hours and I was alone yes in the end I was always alone I

couldn't go on too much solitude and such immense exhaustion so one evil day in july the 27th of july

1890 1890 1890 1890 to be precise one day of utter weariness I shot myself in the chest

surrounded by wheat in the middle of the fields just where I loved to paint two days later I died

my dedicated and beloved brother Theo died just six months later

Vincent just before you die you wrote two letters to your brother Theo

the first letter you wrote but didn't mail was found on your body in that letter stained by your blood

you told you told Theo of your torment and how you risked your life for your work for your paintings in the

other letter the one you mailed you told Theo about your love of the light and detail in one of your last

paintings foreground of green and pink grass a lilac and green bush on the left

and the clump of plants with whitish foliage in the center a rose bed

the house itself in the background pink with a roof of blueish tiles

a bench with three chairs the dog figure in a yellow hat and the black cat in the foreground pale green sky

I guess you wanted Theo to know how pleased you were with your work

you had a short life only 37 years but your life is made longer by your paintings you live on in them

after all they are what matter most