Loving Vincent
As if walking into a gallery and experiencing all the portraits coming alive in front of your very eyes, this artistic biographical movie is a beautifully realised work of art.
A year after the death of struggling artist Vincent Van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk), we follow Armand (Douglas Booth) as he tries delivering a letter from the artist himself to Van Gogh's brother. Along the way he meets a host of different people that make him start questioning the man's untimely passing.
I must commend the artists that trained to capture Van Gogh's style and then also become animators to make this film the truly wonderful, stunning product it is. There are 65,000 frames and each one was an actual oil painting on canvas - this staggering amount of work really make the visuals something you've never seen before.
The faces, lines, shapes and swirls of the brushstrokes in motion is amazing to see, the flickering of lights in the background or the shaky blobs of pulsating paint help the scenes look like the works of Van Gogh come to colourful life. The end credits with a page turning book of portraits reveals more about the attention to detail that went into this love letter about a very talented man.
One sad truth is the standard style over substance idea, and this film does play its style card and never really finds the substance it needs. I’d say the plot is interesting to a point, as I found out more about the life and times of this Dutch Post Impressionist but the flashback storytelling with characters spieling off amounts of expositional information is a bit safe and uninspired.
It may be such a cliche to say, but this is a paint by numbers story and account of a dynamic individual. Yet, even with the simple method of plot delivery, the craftsmanship and labour of heart etched into this film is something else. The film looks vivid, exceptional and shimmers with breathtaking style.
7.5/10
