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Ross Macleay wrote: > Is there such a thing as a good biopic? Can someone name one? > <snip> > In the turbid mix of > fiction and fact each contaminates the other. I doubt whether there is any > good artwork that can get away with the almost unavoidable violation of > truth and honesty. (But it is a challenge, and surely some biopic has > succeeded.) ... Aristotle said a life does not make a good > story - all those episodic stations that have to be included one after the > other, lacking rhyme or reason, merely inviting or expecting recognition and > reverence. The great problem is plot. Pialat's 'VAN GOGH' chooses to follow the events of the last 67 days of the painter's life, and sidesteps the heightening and distorting effect of melodrama (where the subject of the bio becomes the planet around which all the other characters revolve). Pialat works against the 'Great Man' formula, and treats Vincent as just one problematic participant in a community of people who all believe themselves to be the centers of their own stories. Rossellini's historical biographies--'SOCRATES' and 'BLAISE PASCAL' are two that I've seen--also eschew melodrama for quotidian reality. --Robert Keser