Watched Loving Vincent, which my sister Sylvia brought me from Australia. The title is derived from "Your loving Vincent", by which Van Gogh signed his letters. It is a 100% "handpainted" movie, with flashbacks in black and white.
A year after Van Gogh's death the postmaster Roulin sends his son Armand to deliver an undelivered letter Van Gogh had written to his brother Theo, not to Theo, who in the movie has also passed away, but to Theo's widow. Armand searches for the most trustworthy person to send the letter overseas, in the process interviewing the people who surrounded Vincent during his final days and indirectly investigating the circumstances of his death.
The movie suffers from a weak point of attack and a weak premise. Armand is as much a protagonist as Van Gogh is, yet he undergoes no dramatic change at the end of the movie. Moreover, the end titles are accompanied by American Pie's "Starry Starry Night"--sung not by a man but by a woman, which somehow made me think that this song was the original inspiration for the conception of the movie.
During my viewing I encountered the following visual problems:
--The painted flashbacks are like grisailles, which van Gogh never employed in his paintings, and they are executed with softer brushwork, sometimes seemingly simulating charcoal drawings, quite un-Van-Gogh-like and making them come across, at times, as illustrations for the old Ideals magazine.
--Despite the simulation of some of Van Gogh's interiors and exteriors, the composition of the shots is for the movie screen rather than for the canvas, using extreme close-ups, high angles, and low angles.
--The movie was evidently shot with real characters against real sets and afterward "painted over", resulting in being artistically unimpressive. As a matter of fact, there are moments when the photography rather than the brushwork dominates.
The only reason I could fully appreciate this movie and stayed through its end was that I actually have the huge book Vincent by Himself: A Selection of Van Gogh's Paintings and Drawings Together with Extracts from His Letters (edited by Bruce Bernard) and had watched, a few years back, the 1956 movie Lust for Life by Vincente Minnelli, which explored the very same characters and scenes (and which I felt was more difficult to execute yet was more successful despite the fact that it employed a lot less artists). Over all, Loving Vincent is too much about loneliness, and could be difficult viewing for the average person, especially since the heavy impasto becomes tedious after the first half of the movie.
A year after Van Gogh's death the postmaster Roulin sends his son Armand to deliver an undelivered letter Van Gogh had written to his brother Theo, not to Theo, who in the movie has also passed away, but to Theo's widow. Armand searches for the most trustworthy person to send the letter overseas, in the process interviewing the people who surrounded Vincent during his final days and indirectly investigating the circumstances of his death.
The movie suffers from a weak point of attack and a weak premise. Armand is as much a protagonist as Van Gogh is, yet he undergoes no dramatic change at the end of the movie. Moreover, the end titles are accompanied by American Pie's "Starry Starry Night"--sung not by a man but by a woman, which somehow made me think that this song was the original inspiration for the conception of the movie.
During my viewing I encountered the following visual problems:
--The painted flashbacks are like grisailles, which van Gogh never employed in his paintings, and they are executed with softer brushwork, sometimes seemingly simulating charcoal drawings, quite un-Van-Gogh-like and making them come across, at times, as illustrations for the old Ideals magazine.
--Despite the simulation of some of Van Gogh's interiors and exteriors, the composition of the shots is for the movie screen rather than for the canvas, using extreme close-ups, high angles, and low angles.
--The movie was evidently shot with real characters against real sets and afterward "painted over", resulting in being artistically unimpressive. As a matter of fact, there are moments when the photography rather than the brushwork dominates.
The only reason I could fully appreciate this movie and stayed through its end was that I actually have the huge book Vincent by Himself: A Selection of Van Gogh's Paintings and Drawings Together with Extracts from His Letters (edited by Bruce Bernard) and had watched, a few years back, the 1956 movie Lust for Life by Vincente Minnelli, which explored the very same characters and scenes (and which I felt was more difficult to execute yet was more successful despite the fact that it employed a lot less artists). Over all, Loving Vincent is too much about loneliness, and could be difficult viewing for the average person, especially since the heavy impasto becomes tedious after the first half of the movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment