Painting Pictures: Loving Vincent (Dir Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, 1h35m, 2017)
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| Loving Vincent (US Theatrical Poster) |
Cinema, and the world, love Vincent Van Gogh. For an artist who debatably only sold one painting in his lifetime via his brother, Theo ('The Red Vineyard', which now hangs in Moscow)-although this is largely discounted by the extensive letters between the Van Gogh brothers-Vincent van Gogh now rubs shoulders with the superstars of modern art in both fame, prominence, and marketability. It is, after all,
difficult to imagine his contemporaries enjoying the same rock-star treatment; Gauguin collaborating with Pokémon to release a keenly collected set of exclusive for museum cards, or Cezanne teaming
up with Vans for a series of skate shoes, don't quite have the ring, the visual shorthand of flowers and stars, and rolling countryside, the certain je ne sais quoi coolness as Van Gogh.
Much of this has to
do, in simple fashion, with the sublime narrative arc of the painter's life, struggling with his own demons, yet producing staggering numbers-over eight hundred paintings-in barely nine years-essentially launching post-Impressionism, before dying in mysterious circumstances at the age of just thirty-seven. This undeniably dramatic life-his sudden appearance in the Parisian art world, his confinement to mental asylums,
his flight to attempt to create an artist's colony in rural France, and to his violent end, innately cinematic. Of all, his mysterious end in the wheatfields of Auvers-sur-Oise seems to fascinate filmmakers, from the 1950s onwards, with the two most recent, At Eternity's Gate, starring Willem Dafoe, and the subject of today's column, Loving Vincent.
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| Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth), on the trail of Van Gogh |
What sets Loving Vincent apart immediately from the preceding decades of films about Van Gogh is a simple but daring decision. This film is animated, or rather, the film is painted, comprising of over 60,000 individual
paintings, each executed over a single frame of filmed actors on green-screen composited over backgrounds from Van Gogh's own work, all of them presented in Van Gogh's style, by over a hundred artists. It's breathtaking to see the static canvases of Van Gogh, of his many subjects across Paris and beyond, come to life, to see figures move through the familiar streets of Arles, to see our characters, familiar to anyone with knowledge
of Van Gogh's work, from the Roulin family to the Gachets to the inhabitants and locations of Auvers-Sur-Oise, and Van Gogh himself, inhabit a world of paint and canvas
The emulation of Van Gogh's
visual style is so impressive, especially in the landscapes, that sweep past the camera, is one thing but the detail, the attention to the evolutions of the painter's style, even in the film's
less openly impressionistic moments. Painted animation, for its part is a rare, and painstaking way of making a film, largely the preserve of Russian film makers such as Aleksandr Petro. The fact that the duo of Kobiela and
Welchman have now made a second film, The Peasants (2023) is nothing short of impressive, given the six-year production of Loving Vincent, even if this adaption of the Polish novel's artistic influence is looser, influenced by late 19th and early 20th century Young Poland artists, and given part of its production has been
under the shadow of the invasion of Ukraine.
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| Roulin and Marguerite Gachet (Saoirse Ronan), in the fields of Auvers |
Loving Vincent though, is more than just an impressive technical feat, and largely concerns itself with the journey of Armand Roulin
(Douglas Booth), the subject, along with his family of several of Van Gogh's most famous paintings in the artist's footsteps. His father, Joseph Roulin (Chris O'Dowd), the postman for much of Vincent and Theo's
correspondence, tasks his son with the delivery of one final letter from Vincent to Theo. Thus, Armand sets out for Paris, and into an adventure, which quickly turns detective story, to determine the cause of Van Gogh's
death, first encountering 'Pere' Tanguy (John Sessions), Van Gogh's main artistic supplier, who informs Armand both of Theo's passing, and recounts Van Gogh's arrival in Paris as that of a rare talent in
art. Tanguy directs Armand onto Auvers-sur-Oise, and it is here that the film begins to unravel the mystery of Van Gogh's death.
It is here, among the wheatfields of Auvers that the film truly begins to
explore Van Gogh's work, and personality through others' eyes, as well as the mystery of his death: so Armand encounters several figures from Van Gogh's time in the area. These range from Adeline Ravoux (Eleanor
Tomlinson), supportive of the artist, and shocked by his death, to the largely dismissive figure of Louise Chevalier (the final role of the late Helen McCrory), the housekeeper of Van Gogh's doctor, who regards the
troubled figure of Van Gogh as little more than a madman. These figures, straight from Van Gogh's paintings, are full of animation, and placed into the landscapes of Auvers, show the stunning range and depth of Van Gogh's
artistry, and how those around him viewed it.
Moreover, though, there is debate over Van Gogh's death, the figures around the village all having their theories, from the boatman, who believes that
Van Gogh was having an affair with Marguerite Gachet (Saoirse Ronan), who herself denies the connection, only later admitting that she was frightened of their connection and of distracting him from his work. Much of this comes
to centre on Van Gogh's 'suicide' and the involvement in his death of the mysterious figure of René Secretan, only stoked into life, as Armand's suspicions and connections to the people in the village grow, by
the doctor, Mazery (English actor, Bill Thomas), who suspects foul play. So tension, and the mystery, grows, until the truth itself, and the fate of the letter, emerge in the final acts of the film with the arrival of that
figure closest to Van Gogh, in his last months of life.
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| A painstaking masterpiece: Loving Vincent is a spectacular work |
Loving Vincent loves Vincent; the film is a tribute to his art, to his last years of life, to his journey as an artist from his unhappy childhood to Paris to Auvers, and beyond.
Moreover, though, it is a stunning work of animation, a great achievement, technically and logistically, but also artistically, a true tribute to one of the most famous artists of all time, and the mystery of his final
days.
Rating: Must See
Loving Vincent is available to stream via AppleTV, and on DVD and BluRay from Altitude Film Distribution. It is also currently
available via Hoopla, and on DVD and BluRay from Altitude Film Distribution in the US.
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