Vincent & Theo

When Vincent van Gogh decided to paint, he was broke, alone and thirty. The one thing holding him up was his brother Theo: an art dealer with a steady job who sent money on a schedule. Robert Altman keeps the two of them together and refuses to tell Vincent's pain without the weight it put on Theo. The screenplay draws on the letters between the brothers. The film opens with footage of a van Gogh auction held at Christie's in 1987, then goes back to 1883 and runs to Vincent's death and Theo's a few months later. That opening states the argument up front: these are the paintings he could not sell while alive. Tim Roth plays Vincent and Paul Rhys plays Theo. The production was shot as a four-hour television miniseries and cut to 138 minutes for cinemas. Who it's for: Viewers who like Altman, and artist biographies that dodge the usual shapes. Who it's not for: The telling is deliberately loose and Vincent is not trying to be sympathetic. Anyone looking for the myth of the artist will find it uncomfortably ordinary.