Movie Review: Loving Vincent

Loving Vincent *** / *****

Directed by: Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman.

Written by: Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman & Jacek Dehnel. 

Starring: Robert Gulaczyk (Vincent van Gogh), Douglas Booth (Armand Roulin), Jerome Flynn (Dr. Gachet), Saoirse Ronan (Marguerite Gachet), Helen McCrory (Louise Chevalier), Chris O'Dowd (Postman Roulin), John Sessions (Père Tanguy), Eleanor Tomlinson (Adeline Ravoux), Aidan Turner (Boatman).

 

Watching Loving Vincent I was struck my two thoughts throughout – the first being that the film was visually dazzling, not quite like anything I’ve seen before, and the second being that I wished the filmmakers had spent more time on the narrative than they did. The Vincent of the title is Vincent Van Gogh, the tortured Dutch artist, uncelebrated in his own brief life, celebrated ever since, and the film is made up of some 65,000 images, from 125 artists, who paint the individual frames in Van Gogh’s style – bringing to life some of his famous portraits and landscapes. The film looks magnificent – as one would hope for a film that apparently took 10 years to complete. With that much time being necessary to invest in making the film, I cannot help but wonder why the filmmakers didn’t find a more interesting story to tell.

 

The story takes place after Vincent has already died – apparently by suicide, at the age of 27. Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth) is an angry young man, prone to alcohol and fighting, who is tasked by his post master father (Chris O’Dowd) – the only man in their small town who liked Vincent when he was there during his life – with travelling to Paris to deliver a just discovered letter to Vincent’s brother Theo. He gets to Paris only to find that Theo also died – not long after Vincent – but is given another name – Dr. Gachet (Jerome Flynn) who lives in Auvers-sur-Oise – the small, country town Vincent lived in until his death. Armand, who at first hated Vincent, but grows to like him as he hears stories about him, travels there to give Dr. Gachet the letter – thinking that he’ll know what to do once he does. The rest of the movie has Armand talking too many of the residents of Auvers-sur-Oise – and getting wildly different stories about Vincent. He even starts to believe that Vincent didn’t actually kill himself – but was instead murdered.

 

There is not a frame of the movie that isn’t lovely to look at – and thanks to Clint Mansell’s lovely, melancholy score, much of the movie is a pleasure to listen to as well. The film captures the beauty of Van Gogh’s images, and brings to life in a way that doesn’t cheapen them. The actors in the film end up looking like a cross between Van Gogh’s images of people in his life, and the actors themselves (side-by-side comparisons during the end credits are fascinating to look at).

 

Yet, as I watched the film – which only runs about 90 minutes – I couldn’t help but grow restless. The most interesting character in the story is Van Gogh himself – and he exists in the story mainly as a cipher, seen in beautiful black and white images – but because the film seems too stuck on this Rashomon like storytelling, he never comes into focus. The rest of the characters just aren’t that interesting to be around, and the murder mystery aspect of the narrative doesn’t really work either.

 

Loving Vincent is a lovely film to watch – and in terms of its style, it shows what can be done with animation, if filmmakers are given the time and resources to do it. The film looks great. I just cannot help but wonder why the filmmakers wanted to use this process on this story.