Loving Vincent

I saw this movie when I was 20 years old. I am now 21. My apologies for the delay.

Loving Vincent is an animated film centred around a young man, a former subject of one of Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings, discovering details about the great artist’s death and life.

Movies are magic aren’t they.

There are times in film criticism where you cannot help but make objective statements. This is one of those moments. The way this film was made is legitimately astonishing.

Every single one of the over 60,000 frames used in the making of this 90-minute film was oil-painted by an army of artists from around the world, trained to emulate the style of Van Gogh. This effort took 5 years and its results are simply mesmerising.

You really must pinch yourself sometimes while watching Loving Vincent. You are literally watching a moving painting and a moving painting that could have been painted by Vincent himself!

It is truly amazing, and I cannot recommend it enough based on the technical prowess alone.

Technical prowess alone is not all that makes a film though, so we have to look at the story.

In the broad strokes, this is a genuinely moving tale of an imperfect man trying to find his way to the heart of a dead and equally imperfect artist. As the film began I genuinely disliked our protagonist for his attitude and for the way the actor portraying him worked.

Yet as we go along with him, his arc made true sense and I am grateful that the writers decided to give this man the flaws he had so we can relate him to the artist whose life he is studying.

In the tighter strokes, I must admit, there are some flaws.

The structure is a little flawed and the dialogue can go from poetic to simply banal. The actors are generally doing a good job, but when we see them in their painted forms, there is a moment where I go “I’ve seen him before”. One could argue that this is true in any film, but it is more pronounced here when you are supposed to believe that this is a world from the mind of the great Dutch artist.

The ending has some problems also. At the very end, like in many films with a true story as its basis, there is an epilogue describing the fates of the characters involved. This comes in the form of a booklet on screen that I had difficulty reading quickly enough to get every detail.

My advice to filmmakers who want to do these epilogues is summation. Let the audience have a chance to pull out their phones on the way home and check out Wikipedia for further information.

You may think I am being harsh to a film that is objectively a marvel, but to not notice the imperfections in the canvas would be a disservice to you.

Recommended Scenario: If you want to see a film quite unlike any other, and can put up with some annoyances.