Lust for Life Page #4

- Yeah.

- I can't tell you how grateful I am.

- That's all right.

Now take that.

How much longer do you need us?

I can't get supper ready

sitting in this chair, you know.

I'm sorry. You can get up now.

I'm going to the market.

Next time, will you keep

some money for food?

If we could eat drawings,

it might be different.

I saved some money.

You dropped it on the beach.

I didn't give it back to you.

My mother was right, getting myself

hooked up with a crazy painter.

Keep an eye on him.

Dear Brother, I think of you so often,

so very, very often these days.

If only you could be here

and see for yourself how it is with us. ;

that this is a real home, rooted in life...

with a woman and a cradle,

and a child's high chair.

The feeling I have for Christine is real, too.

I'm tired.

I'm going in to feed the baby.

Not yet. Christine, come back!

I'm fed up.

Month after month, it's the same thing.

- What's the matter now?

- I'm fed up with living on bread and coffee.

You take every penny you're given

and throw it away on paints and canvases.

- Don't start that again.

- Look at these.

How much do they cost?

You haven't even used up the old ones yet.

Shut up. Don't interfere with things

you don't know.

I won't. I have to pick up after you,

mend those rags you call clothes...

pose for you for hours,

on top of everything else.

- What do you think I am? Your slave?

- Stop nagging!

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't better off

the way I was.

Don't you dare. Do you hear me?

If only we could have a piece of meat

once in a while, or an egg.

I'm sick of worrying every night

how we'll get money to eat the next day.

You call that a life?

Couldn't you write to your brother?

I can't ask him again.

He's helping all he can.

What about the man

who wanted to meet you?

- Tersteeg.

- Maybe he could sell some of your stuff.

I went to see him. Offered me

a hand-down like I was a beggar.

Didn't you take it?

He said I had no talent.

Even if I did, I started too late.

That leaves only your cousin Mauve.

Couldn't he help?

Or did you have a fight with him, too?

Did you?

Mauve can go to hell.

He helps me when he's in the mood.

The rest of the time,

he doesn't care whether I'm dead or alive.

"Oh, I'm sorry, my boy.

Go home. I can't see you now.

"Go home and work with those casts."

I'm sick of working

with those idiotic casts!

Don't look down your nose

at those casts of his.

He sells what he paints!

I don't want to hear about those casts

from you or from anybody else!

Cien?

Where've you been?

I asked you where you've been.

- At my mother's.

- For two days?

- You said you wouldn't go back.

- There was something to eat.

You promised

not to get into that life again.

And some jokes for a change.

- Where are you going?

- My father's ill. I have to go back.

- How long will you be gone?

- Depends on what happens.

- Vincent, I...

- Yes?

What is it?

Nothing.

There's some painting muslin

left in the cupboard.

Make some shirts for the boy.

I won't be there when you get back.

- Don't say that.

- I didn't want to tell you.

I've been feeling restless.

Besides, my mother's right, what she said.

You don't earn enough

for me and the baby.

- It's a bad life.

- This is no time for...

You'll forget about us once you get home.

It won't be hard.

- Where will you go? How will you live?

- It'll be the old life, I suppose.

Vincent, it's not your fault.

You've been good.

You're the only person

who's ever been good to me and the baby.

Just as if he was your own.

All aboard.

What is it

that came between Father and me?

Why couldn't I have shown him

a little more consideration?

Given him some pleasure

while he was alive?

It wouldn't have hurt me

to come to his church once in a while.

We always assume there's time...

and that we can give love

on our own terms.

Then one day we wake up and find

it's too late to give it on any terms.

Will you go back to your life in The Hague?

That's over.

It was wrong from the beginning.

Come to Paris, Vincent.

We could live together.

You're not the only one that's lonely.

Not yet, Theo. Some day, but not now.

You could meet other painters.

See what they're doing.

If I'm to be anything as a painter,

I've got to break through the iron wall...

between what I feel

and what I can express.

And my best chance of doing it is here...

where my roots are, the people I know...

the earth I know.

Dear Theo, thank you for the money,

the paints, and canvas.

With your help, I go forward.

I feel the force to work

growing daily within me.

Do your realize, Theo,

that what I'm doing is new?

In the paintings of the old masters...

did you ever see

a single man or woman at work?

Did they ever try to paint a laborer,

or a man digging?

They didn't.

And for good reason. ;

because work is so hard to draw.

Just look at the way he's dressed.

That old sheepskin.

Oh, my. I tell you, I'm sorry for the family.

To paint these people means to

be with them in the fields day after day...

and by their firesides at night.

Since the rains came,

I've become absorbed in the weavers.

They make such good subjects.

The old oak wood

darkened by sweating hands...

and the shadows of the looms

on the gray mud walls.

All these months

I've been trying to find a pattern...

trying not so much to draw hands,

as gestures...

not so much faces,

as the expressions of people.

Men and women

who know the meaning of toil.

I want to make clear that these people...

sitting around a meal of potatoes

in the evening...

have turned the soil

with the very hands they put in the dish.

That they have honestly earned their food.

I want to paint something

that smells of bacon smoke and steam.

Something that's the good, dark color

of our Dutch earth.

Willemien. Come in.

Here, sit down.

What's the matter?

- The neighbors been at you again?

- You know how they are.

Such a small place.

What is it this time?

It has to do with

the way you dress, partly, and...

I dress this way

because I work in the fields.

Because I have nothing else.

And the way you behave, too.

They don't understand it.

It makes trouble for us.

Since Father died, it hasn't been easy.

People have stopped coming to the house.

They avoid us.

It isn't very comfortable and...

Is your young man

one of those who's stopped coming?

Yes, he is.

But that doesn't matter so much.

- Yes, it does.

- It's the rest of the family.

Mother pretends she doesn't notice,

but I know it's upset her.

She'll never tell you, so I felt I must.

I'll get out. Take a few days to finish this,

and then I'll leave.

No, Vincent. I didn't mean that.

Of course you did, Willemien.

It's all right.

I've accomplished

what I stayed here to do...

and maybe it is time to move on.

I'm sick and tired of these cheap jokes.

Art is a serious business.

And in Paris, at least.

An artist with a new idea should be...

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