"Loving Vincent" is simply bewildering to watch. I'm no art snob. I don't know my modernism from my impressionistic. But it's so good and so visually amazing to watch that the woman I was sitting next to in the movie theater kept grabbing me by the arm and asking me "Isn't this amazing?"
She was probably drunk, but truer words were never spoken by an intoxicated stranger.
On paper, a biopic movie about Vincent Van Gogh and the vague circumstances surrounding his death might not sound like the most interesting way to spend an evening at the movie theater, but the film "Loving Vincent" is more than what it's about. Its execution is where it becomes something amazing, its bones are its beauty.
"Loving Vincent" is an animated movie composed entirely of oil paintings, over 65,000 frames which were then put together and transformed into film. Click the following link to get an idea of what I'm talking about. If that doesn't sell you alone on the idea that this film is one worth seeing, I don't know what will.
"Loving Vincent" follows Armand, a man adrift in life, whose father was the mailperson for Vincent Van Gogh. Armand's dad asks Armand to personally deliver a letter, the last letter Vincent Van Gogh (who has been dead a year at this point) had sent to his brother, Theo, a letter which Armand's father has failed to deliver up until now. Though Armand was aware of who Van Gogh was, and wasn't fond of him as a person, he agrees. From there, he talks with the people who knew Van Gogh, people that knew him for long stretches of his life or simply in the final days prior to his suicide, and grows not only to know and feel for Van Gogh, but to question the shady circumstances surrounding his apparent suicide, what motivated it or if it even was a suicide.
Plot-wise, this movie is nothing amazing. It's "sufficient", it holds the movie together well enough, but you won't walk away from "Loving Vincent" raving about its story. Obviously, its draw is its visuals. And they are magnificent, simply brain jolting to watch. The images move and shift with this organic, liquid warp, as one painting transforms into another, as we quite literally watch art come to life.
Fans of Van Gogh's art will recognize many of the frames are actual pieces of Van Gogh's artwork (of which he produced 800 pieces of in 8 years, the film told me), repurposed and with a scene built around it. But even without any proper knowledge of Van Gogh or his works, the movie is unlike anything one will ever see.
The film is filled with flashbacks whose art styles shift. The present day-plot is done in Van Gogh's colorful, surrealistic style, while the flashbacks are done in greyscale, almost photorealistic quality, both styles of which are uncanny and beautiful to watch. Apparently, 125 painters were commissioned to work on the film, which in and of itself is a landmark in the world of both film and painting.
You could call a movie like this a gimmick. Like I said, the plot of "Loving Vincent" leaves a lot to be desired. Its main character is simply a vessel to move the story along, a person we as the audience never really get to know, never truly care for. It's a valid point, but when a movie's "gimmick" is as spectacularly done as "Loving Vincent"'s was, it doesn't matter. "Loving Vincent" will go down as a monumental artistic achievement, something anyone, even someone like myself who doesn't know a lick about art, can be simply floored by.
Give it a watch, friends.
