拍卖会上,文森特·凡高(蒂姆·罗斯 Tim Roth 饰)的名作《向日葵》的标价逐渐增高,最后固定在一个天文数字上。在世人热烈追捧凡高的艺术时,有谁会想到提奥(保罗·里斯 Paul Rhys 饰)这样一个名字呢?本片讲述了凡高与他的弟弟提奥之间的故事。凡高一生为贫穷所困,画入心魔的他为了坚持自己的艺术,不得不靠着弟弟提奥的救济。在凡高看来,他只能把自己献给画布和色彩,其它的生活烦扰应该由弟弟来解决,因为他把自己的作品全部给了提奥。提奥热爱和尊敬哥哥的艺术,虽然自己也并不是很富裕,但是他心甘情愿地去支援哥哥,在凡高每次遇到经济问题,甚至情感问题,他都会及时给予无私的帮助。可以说,没有提奥,这世上根本也不会有凡高。凡高生前只卖出过一副画,他死于对绘画的癫狂,对提奥的愧疚。凡高自杀后,伤心绝望的提奥很快也撒手人寰。兄弟俩都不曾有机会来享受天价凡高艺术所带来的成就,只能留待世人传颂。
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”