A Review by Richard Masloski

I am so deeply honored by this review of my film The Eyes of Van Gogh from the late sculptor and composer Richard Masloski. https://www.masloski.com/

In so many ways I find it to be extraordinary.  An artist can usually only dream in vain of a critic who writes so well; is so thoughtful and insightful; so impassioned in his understanding and evaluation.

In sharing his review with you I believe I am also sharing his magnificent spirit. 

Who is Alexander Barnett?

He is the man who wrote, directed and stars in what is arguably the most poignant and profound portrayal of Vincent van Gogh ever put on film. There have been many movie Van Goghs: Kirk Douglas' rendition in LUST FOR LIFE is magisterial. But despite the intense veracity of Vincente Minnelli's 1956 film, there were warts beneath the warts in the actual history that just didn't make it to the screen in that lavish and rich outing. Robert Altman offered a grimmer and grimier version of things in VINCENT AND THEO and Tim Roth gave us a more insular artist - whereby from all historic accounts the destined Dutchman was extremely demonstrative and vocal and all over the place. Jacques Dutronc's turn with the paint brush in VAN GOGH was likewise introspect in a biopic that flung facts around as wildly as Van Gogh flung paint anywhere and everywhere in his frenzied attack of the nihilistic blankness of the ever-goading canvas.

In Alexander Barnett - through his raw, ragged and really realistic THE EYES OF VAN GOGH - we have an actor who seems to be channeling the actual spirit of the artist. For starters, he looks probably the closest to what Van Gogh probably looked like - given that there are no photographs of him as an adult and all we have to go by are his many variegated self-portraits. There are many sequences in this film wherein I felt I was actually looking at the real man, as if caught on some time machine of a film camera. But beyond the outward, it is in the probing of the inward that Mr. Barnett excels. From start to finish, he never loses Van Gogh in himself. There is not a false note in the performance. His acting is a veritable acting class in and of itself. If he and this film had ever been eligible, his is a performance supremely worthy of an Oscar.

The script is sublime. In it, Mr. Barnett dares to bravely show us the darkest sides of Van Gogh. These scenes are painful to watch, if one is totally sold on the Van Gogh-as-Saint interpretation of history. Yet balanced with that blackness, shown are all of the reasons why - as Don McClean sings in STARRY NIGHT - "this world was never meant for one as beautiful" as Vincent. If Mr. Barnett's script were only available in printed form, it would still be (in addition to being historically accurate and revealing) intense and exciting to read but - in the finished film - these scenes are enacted with such passion and pathos that they seem less acted than lived. As directed by Mr. Barnett, there is a John Cassavettes-like sense of improvisation and therefore total reality that packs one tremendous emotional wallop after another. And like Cassavettes and even Welles in certain instances, Mr. Barnett holds many scenes for incredible amounts of time that lesser directors would be too timid to even attempt. These long, unedited sequences carefully build the utter sense of reality that Mr. Barnett was evidently after and has so eminently achieved. We, as viewers, become part of what we are watching - in ways that are quite rare to most movies.

Also in this immense film there are many set-pieces and images that will stay with one for a long, long time. Haunting sequences and riveting images that are imaginatively conceived and expertly, flawlessly delivered. One example is when Vincent imagines/dreams/fantasizes/hallucinates the death of his beloved brother. After the "imaginary" sequence there is a sharp cut to Vincent sitting up in his asylum bed in the middle of the night, crying and cradling what is apparent emptiness - but is, instead, the impossible thought of a lost Theo. Brilliantly, in this one sequence alone, this one image of Vincent cradling "emptiness", volumes are spoken - for in the event of losing Theo, Vincent would indeed be cradling emptiness. But in the larger context, this one image of Vincent cradling "emptiness" in the middle-of-the-night speaks largely and painfully for most of the whole of his life. It is in such brilliant, often wordless scenes and sequences that Mr. Barnett's vision explodes from the film frame as passionately and as profoundly as Vincent van Gogh's vision exploded from his canvas frames and bathed the world in color and gave us a new way of seeing. As Van Gogh's work transcended the bounds of its frames, so also does Mr. Barnett's film transcend the boundaries of the movie or television screen. In both instances, with both artists, Art does what it so rarely does. Art... becomes Life.