Vincent: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh

Cox's version of the life and work of Van Gogh will surprise those unfamiliar with the painter's correspondence with his brother Theo, where what emerges is a far cry from the fevered illiterate loony of popular mythology. Read by Hurt, the letters, besides being intensely moving, reveal an artist both mystical and intellectual, and a practical man taking steps to defend himself from the well-known enemy of madness within. The words are wonderful, and of course the paintings too. Each time the screen commemorates that perfectly poised tug between the precision of the draughtsmanship and the expressionist writhings of the brushwork, you can guess at the strength of mind necessary to produce such art. Cox's film presents a more complex man than the Kirk Douglas of Minnelli's gorgeous Lust for Life. There isn't much on the turbulent relationship with Gauguin at Arles, and the self-mutilation, like the suicide, favours reeling subjective camera. At times the filmed landscape is flooded with the subject's psychology - fields of flowers whoosh past into an exaltation of abstract colour, the windmills of Van Gogh's native land revolve like the windmills of the mind. Like most of Cox's work, unclassifiable and considered.