'Vincent : The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh' : (NR)

IN "VINCENT: The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh," two Dutch artists meet. The first one is obvious. The second is director Paul Cox, an exiled eccentric himself, who paints the best testimonial a Dutch master could ask for.

A testimonial that sits back and listens, finding its vivid colors in Van Gogh's letters, which are read with husky effectiveness by actor John Hurt. Selected from the artist's regular and passionate outpourings to his brother (and supporter) Theo, they speak of the darkness and color, despair and ecstasy, felt by one of the all-time great artists and humanists.

"Van Gogh is such an impossible name for foreigners to pronounce," writes the then-obscure artist, unaware of the reverent art-history lectures, expensive coffee-table books and acquisitive hunger of millionaire collectors later to proliferate around his gutteral moniker; not to mention the continued mispronouncements. He also discusses his love of humanity, problems with women, "undercurrents of vague sadness," a unsuccessful sojourn with Gauguin, the beauty of the color yellow and a quasi-religious search for "the white ray of light, or the good."

Or hear this childlike joy from a painter discovering new abilities: "I squeezed the roots and trunks in from the tube and modeled it a little with the brush. Yes! Now they stand there, rising from the ground, strongly rooted in it and I am glad I haven't learned painting, because then I might have learned to pass by such effects as this."

Naturally, you will see many of his paintings and drawings, those spiky, intense pictures of flowers, trees, landscapes, night skies, potato eaters and a grim corn reaper. Cox seeks the inspiration behind the images by taking his cameras to real, light-infused trees, to windmills chopping the air, trains chugging through countryside and crows flapping in V-formation. We even see shots from behind bars, matching Van Gogh's later view of the world from asylum captivity. Not so effective, however, are Cox's living tableaux, where paid "period" extras act out real-life scenes in bars and restaurants. They look like paid extras. At least their appearances are mercifully rare.

"Vincent" presents a stamina problem also, the kind you experience from too long a visit to the art museum. Van Gogh, after all, created 1,800 works in his 10-year "career" (he sold only one painting in his lifetime) and had much to say about it, which may be more than your not-ready-for-art-lecture brain can take at one sitting. But at least it's too much of a good thing.

VINCENT: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF VINCENT VAN GOGH (Unrated)