Classic Movie Review Lust for Life

Lust for Life (1956) 

Directed by Vincente Minnelli 

Written by Norman Corwin 

Starring Kirk Douglas, Anthony Quinn

Release Date September 17th, 1956 

Published September 5th, 2017 

Our classic this week on the Everyone is a Critic movie review podcast is Kirk Douglas and director Vincent Minnelli’s portrayal of the life of troubled artist Vincent Van Gogh, Lust for Life. If the film illustrates one thing more than anything else it is that acting has changed a great deal since 1956. While Douglas and co-star Anthony Quinn, as fellow painting legend Paul Gaugin rage at each other, it’s not hard to see why the directors of the next generation began to strive for something more natural and genuine from their actors. Lust for Life seems to me to be among the last films for which theatrically trained actors were the vanguard of the cinema.

Lust for Life picks up the life of Vincent Van Gogh as he is first rejected for a position as a priest. After pleading with a church leader that he must be allowed to minister and preach the word of God he is finally given an assignment. Van Gogh travels to a small mining town where he fails to connect with the mineworkers and their families with his scripted sermons. It isn’t until a parishioner takes Van Gogh into the mines that he begins to see that he must not hold himself above his flock.

The church is horrified by Van Gogh’s choice to live without the garish accoutrements his church salary should have allowed him. Their theory is that living a life of privilege away from the common people is to live as an example of what the poor should strive for. What they don’t understand and what Van Gogh completely understands is hopelessness, the way it seeps into the bones of people who’ve never known anything but toil and suffering.

While it is unspoken in the film, my interpretation was that Van Gogh was so moved by what he saw in the mines that he lost his faith in God and began searching for the meaning of life in his paint, a search that consumed him so deeply that his life ended at the age of 38 with suicide. Lust for Life hints that Van Gogh's suicide is part madness and part his belief that he was unable to capture the meaning and beauty of life on his canvas, even though today he is recognized as genius for capturing and enhancing the beauty of humanity and nature in his work.

When Van Gogh is dismissed from the church he begins dedicating himself to painting, specifically attempting to create art that respects a good hard day’s work. He wants to capture life on canvas but his restless mind robs him of the faculties necessary for managing the rest of his life. What little money Van Gogh received from his more successful and stable brother Theo, Van Gogh spends on more paint and canvases, even after he briefly marries a woman who has a small child.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review It Runs in the Family

It Runs in the Family (2003) 

Directed by Fred Schepisi

Written by Jesse Wigutow 

Starring Michael Douglas, Kirk Douglas, Cameron Douglas, Rory Culkin, Bernadette Peters

Release Date April 25th, 2003

Published April 25th, 2003 

Kirk and Michael Douglas have been searching for years for a project to do together. So what made them choose this film? According to the younger Douglas, the combination of his father's stroke and the tragedy of September 11th made them both realize time is short. Unfortunately, that may have rushed them a little too much in the reading of the script for It Runs In The Family. They saw a workable father-son dynamic, what they missed was the story that surrounded them, a collection of hackney one scenes that wouldn't make it on the worst of sitcoms.

Michael Douglas is Alex Gromberg, an unsatisfied, unhappy corporate lawyer who lives in the shadow of his father Mitchell (Kirk Douglas), the founder of the law firm. As intimated by his co-workers, Alex only remains with the firm to satisfy his father. Unfortunately that doesn't seem possible. As the Gromberg family including Alex's wife Rebecca (Bernadette Peters). His youngest son Eli (Rory Culkin), his mother (Diana Douglas) as well as his no-good oldest son Asher (Cameron Douglas) assemble for Passover; they prepare for yet another family sparring match between father and son over just about everything.

Alex has trouble piling up all around him. At work he has taken on a pro bono case against one of the firm’s own clients. At his volunteer job at a soup kitchen there’s a young woman who can't keep her hands off of him. And of course at home his wife is suspicious of his fidelity and his sons won't talk to him.

That is the setup, abridged by this reviewer to make it coherent. For the plot description it was necessary for me to cut to the chase because the film itself is a series of stops and starts. Annoyingly episodic takes that go absolutely nowhere. So disconnected are some scenes that they could have been reedited into the film in any order.

It's easy to see where this film went wrong, it was bad from its conception. It Runs In the Family is a vanity project and as most vanity projects it plays as everyone knows it's no good but hey, let's finish it anyway. It's nice that Michael and Kirk Douglas got to work together finally and that they could incorporate Michael's son Cameron and Michael's mom. Working with Kirk's ex wife Diana Douglas must have been a real treat for the family but it's not much for the audience.

Director Fred Schepisi is competent and confident in his direction but the film’s script by Jesse Wigutow short circuits anything Schepisi might have accomplished. I doubt it was Wigutow's fault entirely as the script seems unfinished and with this being a vanity project it was probably changed significantly to fit the cast.

It was very nice to see Michael and Kirk Douglas on screen together and it's nice to see how lively Kirk still is at his advanced age. This film is not the coda his career deserves, though this is not necessarily his last film, but there are moments when his class and dignity raises the level of the film. There aren’t many of those moments, but they are nice nevertheless.