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11/02/2017 12:01 AMRated PG-13
In an innovative, hand-painted, animated film, Loving Vincent gives movement to 19th century Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh’s vibrant landscapes and portraits. More than 100 artists worked on transforming Van Gogh’s studies of people into film characters who relive their own versions of Van Gogh’s temperament, and also open a mystery about whether he actually committed suicide. In an arduous process, the brainchild of director/writer Dorota Kobiela (Little Postman, Chopin’s Drawings), and working with producer/writer, Hugh Welchman (Fat Hamster), the artists revised Van Gogh’s palate, such as changing day into night, and painting over live action scenes using his style.
Van Gogh’s fields and starry nights swirl, shimmer, and quiver into another dimension. Most important, the people Vincent painted are given a voice to describe his moods just before his death at 37 years old. Their memories, taken from photographs of the era, shift into black and white and have a smokey, film-noir feeling.
The actors playing those in his portraits all have an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts. Douglas Booth (Jupiter Ascending, Noah) who plays Armand Roulin, the unwilling messenger of a letter from Vincent to his brother, Theo, has the brooding face of the actual portrait. He is the centerpiece of the film and allows the viewer to delve inside Vincent’s tormented world.
Armand’s father, a postman, played by the versatile Chris O’Dowd (St. Vincent, Bridesmaids) tells him that “life can even bring down the strong,” saying that in spite of Vincent’s fortitude, he was treated badly by others and haunted by his own internal struggles. He also doesn’t believe that Vincent committed suicide, because he seemed calm in his last weeks.
Armand learns from each person bits and pieces about the artist. He also discovers that Vincent’s brother Theo has died, seemingly so connected to his brother that he could not go on. Armand becomes more curious, so searches for a proper recipient for the letter. Vincent’s physician, Doctor Gachet, played by Jerome Flynn (TV’s Game of Thrones and Ripper Street), whose rugged face translates to paint beautifully, reveals Vincent’s “unfathomable, empty loneliness,” and that “he took his life to save Theo,” in the most well-rounded perspective.
Earlier, when Armand becomes convinced that Vincent was murdered, the viewer is as entrenched in the mystery as he is. The word “calm” is overused to turn away from the possibility of Vincent’s suicide, in spite of his volatile (he cut off his ear, after all) nature. But, at the same time, the paint-laden swirls in his work spin darkly like thoughts in his mind, over and over.
What is remarkable about the characters’ movements, such as Armand’s figure, seen from a distance approaching a doorway, is how the lines that Vincent may have drawn on a face, or used to highlight a building’s wall, shift slightly under the bevy of artists at work to change an expression, or go from shadow to light. Not a brushstroke seems out of place, and each one alters a moment, giving it more subtlety.
The title of Loving Vincent turns out to be the closing of his letter to Theo, in which he writes, “Very hearty handshakes, Your loving Vincent.” We only see Vincent occasionally, played adequately by newcomer Robert Gulaczyk (Prosta historia o morderstwie), and aren’t permitted inside Vincent’s tortured soul. Rather, we must depend on the imagined perspective of those other ghosts around him, who either loved him or disliked his eccentric nature during his brief, tortured life.