Popular reviews

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★★ 29

  Kirk Douglas creates an impassioned portrait of a starving artist in “Lust for Life,” if not exactly in the image of the one he is meant to be portraying. 

  That would be Dutch impressionist Vincent Van Gogh, perhaps the most known and loved painter of modern times, though most decidedly not the man Douglas is acting out in Vincente Minnelli’s biopic. Douglas’ interpretation of an artist driven to raving madness for want of love is more the actor’s own perception of Van Gogh’s legacy, rather than a direct performance of the man’s life. 

  This makes “Lust” a curious sort of biopic; one that trades on ideas rather than aspects of factuality. This, though, is somewhat befitting of a work about…

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  Review by Carlos Valladares ★★★★½

  When Vincente Minnelli makes a movie about art, I sit up and listen. Playing Vincent Van Gogh, Kirk Douglas's anguish-pain-hysteria swirlingly evokes the brooding, pent-up rage of the Abstract Expressionists, the lonely avant-gardists, the romantics, the hubris-filled artists armed with such noble, radical insight into humanity and nature that their society shuns them, so overwhelming are the sun-like rays they emit. Theirs is a lonely and solemn path. They take on the tortures of emotion and make it more vivid, more lifelike than life, through art. A film of magnetic intensity, a film that transforms the way you look at a tree or a person in a purple sea. And yet, easy romanticizing of the artist's hermit-like destiny is avoided. As is the case with Minnelli's works, ambivalence creeps up behind every silver lining. Those final words of Van Gogh's will haunt my dreams. I'm still tearing up.

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  Review by nora ★★★½

  convinced that technicolor was invented just so van gogh’s paintings would look beautiful on film. wept a little when van gogh told gauguin that he painted the friendly sunflowers just for him. also loooove how modal rózsa’s score is!!! impressionism wasn’t just an era in visual art!!!

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  Review by sirrah993 ★★½

  Lust for Life is at times a good movie with a committed performance by Kirk Douglas in the leading role, but at other times, it’s a poorly executed biopic about the nature of art. 

  Written by Norman Corwin, the film appears to be more focused on the boring dialectical dialogue between what is art and what is not. Douglas, a versatile actor who was drawn into playing emotionally passionate but flawed individuals, plays the legend himself, Vincent Van Gogh, a representation of art that comes from within. Everyone else represents the status quo of the art world, and they represent art from a point of pure aestheticism. The film treats Van Gogh’s psychological trauma as melodrama, resulting in some over-the-top…

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  Review by Sam Van Hallgren ★★★★ 2

  Taking his cue from Van Gogh's boldly painted canvases, Minnelli's biopic has a vivid emotional power that more than compensates for the by the numbers biopic storytelling. Once you get calibrated to its emotional pitch, the film - along with Douglas's extraordinary performance and Miklos Rozsa's potent and emotional score - packs an operatic wallop.

  Also great: James Donald as Vincent's devoted brother Theo.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★

  Metrocolor's cheaper results don't push this to the same heights that Technicolor could have, but Minnelli pushes the process to its limit as he builds his film from establishing shots that contradictorily communicate suffocation through distance to the more intimate ecstasy unleashed when Van Gogh finds his true calling. Kirk Douglas seems such a mismatch for the artist, his cut physique not particularly suited for a troubled weakling whose violent temper exploded from a body only fit enough to hurt itself. But Douglas does not so much play against type as channel that type into a new outlet, and by God I ended up completely invested in his performance. So much of the movie is fades from "reality" into photographs…

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  Review by Noah Thompson ★★★

  I know all about loneliness. Only I don't whine about it.

  As you would surely come to expect if you know anything about the story of Van Gogh, the best parts of Lust for Life revolve around the relationship between Vincent and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. My favorite singular moment is when Vincent has a Freudian slip and accidentally refers to Paul as "Theo", Vincent's brother. The emotive nature of Vincent, his obsession with emotion and both the darkness and beauty in the world is exactly what makes me so intrigued with him as an artist, likely my favorite painter. If you know me well here, I adore At Eternity's Gate, which serves as a gold standard to me for…

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  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★★

  Kirk Douglas plays Van Gogh as Dostoeveskian holy fool somewhere on the spectrum, putting in his 10,000 hours (or however many it takes to be expert) but selling only one painting, manic, sun-stroked, absinthe-soaked, and suicidal.

  Vincent’s name-brother, Vincente Minnelli, veteran of years on the high-artifice Metrocolor sound-stages of MGM is a perfect match to capture Van Gogh's lysergic palette.

  Money shots: Vincent by the river with a halo of candles burning on his straw hat painting “The Starry Night Over the Rhone,” and Vincent wrangling crows, mental and hallucinatory, and an angry blue sky as he paints “Wheatfield with Crows.” Altman and Tim Roth would improve on this.

  I read Lust for Life in Moscow in the early 90s.…

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  Review by Josh Larsen ★★★½ 14

  Kirk Douglas could be a little much, but that proves to be the right amount in Lust for Life. Full review here.

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  Review by Adam ★★★★

  Kirk gives a fantastic performance, as does Quinn, but all I could see was Minnelli at home on his artificial looking sets. There’s something so comforting to me about seeing those fake trees and perfectly put together interiors. I love Minnelli movies!

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  Review by Ruth Scouller ★★★½

  Like the mental health of its subject, this film is often teetering on the very edge between success and failure. But supported along by some solid, appropriate work from Minnelli and one of Kirk Douglas' most astonishing performances, this film manages to capture the captivating essence of Van Gogh better than the other efforts I have seen. The incredible story here, and the brilliantly prolific addiction of artist with his art, manages to navigate this film effectively through its lulls. It probably won't rock your world, but if you have even a remote passing interest in the painter, or art in general, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. Despite his infamy, the heroic quality of Van Gogh emerges renewed…

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  Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★★★ 4

  TW: discussions of self harm

  I was lucky enough to see Artemesia Gentileschi's iconic painting Judith Slaying Holofernes in a Renaissance exhibit last year. It was the only painting by a woman in the exhibit, and seeing it started a conversation between my friend and I after she brought up how class privilege was and is a major factor in women painters’ ability to paint and by extension gain fame. I saw a very similar idea with Van Gogh in Lust for Life. Van Gogh is marginalized in his small community to due to his mental health and neurodiversity (more on that later). He is a man of deep and loving intensity, but as his mental health worsens, he loses…