Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh

For a straight-from-the-bottle supplement to Altman’s dramatic vision, viewers can seek out Paul Cox’s (Man of Flowers) acclaimed 99-minute documentary of van Gogh’s life, Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh. Against a backdrop of paintings and scenes of the regions in which they were created, actor John Hurt reads long, painfully introspective passages from the artist’s diaries and letters. The aesthetic vision of filmmakers like Altman and Cox notwithstanding, it is van Gogh’s works and his words that speak most movingly of the man and his pain. B