Loving Vincent (2017)

This film was beautifully animated, and wonderfully directed. The story and its pacing were fantastic.I actually had to go research the contemporary understanding of Vincent's life, since this story takes an angle I was not familiar with.My gripe? Why do all the French characters in this movie have various British accents! (but the voice acting was great - so who cares)

There's not a shred of me that doubts the talent and time put into every painstaking and undeniably beautiful frame of 'Loving Vincent (2017)', a passion-project which was perhaps unadvisedly painted by hand twenty-four times a second. Not just painted, but properly oil-painted in the style(s) of its somewhat eclectic and now incredibly famous eponymous artist in a move that may have been somewhat ill-advised, considering what the team hoped to achieve narratively, but is certainly impressive. It's the narrative and essentially everything not associated with the visuals that fall flat, though. The story, which is oddly structured and callously segmented, certainly is an incredibly weak attempt at telling an ultimately 'pointless', paint-by-numbers tale. The conceit is that characters and locations from Van Gogh's collection of work are brought to life and used to retell the events leading up to and in the aftermath of his death, with the former being told mostly through frequent flashbacks. The feature quickly becomes insanely repetitive, however, because every encounter our protagonist has always goes the same way: he meets someone, they tell him a tale about Van Gogh, a flashback or two plays, we're told of someone else who might have a better understanding of the artist and then our hero moves onto the next person. Rinse and repeat, over and over again. As you can imagine, this becomes very tiresome, very quickly. Especially when most of these encounters amount to the same thing 'revelation'-wise - and, indeed, in terms of expository information, despite the constant exposition - and don't add anything to the overall 'mystery', which isn't really portrayed as such and doesn't get a satisfactory conclusion - not even an appropriately 'unanswered' one. Speaking of the exposition, the sheer amount of it is almost unrivalled in recent cinema. Every line is burdened with it, on-the-nose and heavy-handed, which makes for a slog of a watch that tells even while it shows. The fact that there's not all that much to tell makes this all the more perplexing. Why they didn't show the story or frame the narrative in more visual fashion - even if it would need to be linear and remove the unnecessary 'post-man' framing device - really is beyond me, especially for a piece so concerned with the way it looks. Honestly, it is a bore and a real chore to get through. It talks down to you, tells you every little detail but never gives you anything meaty to work with, and ultimately doesn't even stick with the theory it presents probably because it is just that: a theory. It could've leaned further into its 'what-if' aspects or alternate-history investigation angle, but instead chose to try and blend its speculation with reality and ends on a strange half-and-half note that doesn't stick the landing. All could be forgiven if it was entertaining, even in the slightest, but it isn't, despite being somewhat intriguing in a few sequences. Like I said, this intrigue all but crumbles away and all you're left with is stilted dialogue, a ham-fisted screenplay, a poor narrative and some truly beautifully animation. One of those things doesn't belong with the rest. Yet, there it sits among the aspects that drag it down. It's a shame, too. All that hard work for something that doesn't stand up in the medium it is presented. If they wanted to make a film that is also a piece of art, they should've focused on the film aspects first because those elements are what can elevate a piece to 'art' status (though it could be argued that every movie can be classed as art, anyway). Film has never been about the visuals, not really. You don't hang a still of a flick up in an art gallery. It's about the piece in motion, the nuances of the story and its themes and, most importantly, how it makes you feel. Sadly, all this picture made me feel was bored. 5/10

I'm not a Van Gogh fan really and as such, didn't really know too much about him, aside the usual stuff. The story here looks at the artists death, what really happened, what were the events that lead up to Van Gogh's final days. It's a very dramatic retelling, but I'm not convinced it would be half as entertaining were it not that the entire film is hand painted frame by frame. It really is quite remarkable, a lovely idea, wonderfully conceived. This isn't pure animated fantasy though, the scenes have been acted with a full cast, then committed to canvas. It's a great piece of work, charming and insightful, although a little cold.

I guess you just can't fight Disney in Hollywood. Did I hear right that the Motion Picture Academy considers Coco to be a better movie than Loving Vincent? I am still scratching my head wondering how a run of the mill kid's film could possibly be better than a true artistic masterpiece. Is it because oil painting is such a primitive technology compared to computer-generated animation? Yes, animating with oils results in slightly jerky animation. Never mind that. Just back and watch how impressionist art becomes a living, moving medium to portray art history. Loving Vincent was a labour of love, not the product of data miners and corporate boardroomsToo many other reviews on IMDB have repeated the storyline but that's not what Vincent is all about. The storyline is simply a vehicle to move us from one famous Van Gogh to another while revealing a little bit of the history and the people and scenes Vincent painted. That makes the art of Van Gogh accessible as well as allowing us to understand his struggles with madness and poverty. That makes this that rare item, an art film that's entertaining as well.Even though the story is the least important aspect of Loving Vincent, the screen writing leaves us with a mystery. Perhaps Vincent didn't commit suicide. Perhaps he was shot either deliberately or accidentally by what we would today call the town bully. See Loving Vincent and decide for yourself.