It felt like just six of us in the 10p showing of ‘Loving Vincent’ at the Roxy on a Saturday night was exactly the right way to enjoy this unique film.
Ninety minutes of oil paint based animation traversing a historically-fictionalized period after VVG’s death, which used flash back/reminiscing to touch on the major themes of his relationship with his brother, depression, torment by local boys and the magnificence of his work. Great movies have great scripts that bring magnificent characters to life. I think this movie started with the premise of an oil paint animation and a hope that it might carry a sub-par script. Maybe it did or maybe it would have been a better 20 minute treatment. On the plus side, the Van-Gogh-ing (van-gock-ing) of the visuals made every scene feel familiar and satisfying. The odd hay stack tossed in, or swirly sky, or self-portrait-like palette satisfied a subconscious hunger for more VG which often took the focus from a one-dimensional/linear script. By the end, I didn’t really care about the story and some of its heavy-handed after-school-special-style messaging. But I loved the moving images.
They used the voice actors as the models for the painting, so I was 10% distracted in the final act with the thought of “oh, that’s Bronn from Game of Thrones”, but still the visuals were compelling. The artists also did a great job creating motion within the scenes with subtle background movement which didn’t feel like they were targeting realism, but rather the light breeze I think of in the background of a lot of VVG’s work. I was less awestruck by the technical magic of an oil paint animation because of my time working in the MTV Animation group. It was most likely less technically arduous than the Beavis and Butthead movie which had to draw each cel individually, where my guess is that due to the oil paint nature of the scenes they often just drew the “differential” over the previous frame. But that detail is inconsequential to the overall feeling you have from ninety minutes of VG in motion.
I will admit that I predisposed to enjoy the film. I dig on VVG’s work, and on the silver screen will sit and watch ‘Lust for Life’ or ‘Vincent and Theo’ like they were ‘The Shawshank Redemption’. When I lived in the Netherlands, I did spend a few weeks saying “Van Gock” before I was overwhelmed with self-pretention and went back to the Americanized ‘Van Go’. Everyone in Amsterdam has a favorite museum, and mine was the Van Gogh if you discounted ‘The Night Watch’ from the Rijksmuseum — I was overwhelmed by that painting in five different ways. Useless fact to create an overly complex analog: more unique individuals in the Netherlands drink locally-brewed Amstel, but Heineken sells more in Holland by volume (i.e., Heinie drinkers put down more per year). I visited the Rijks more often to pay homage to the Men of Militia Company II, but spent more time inside the magical halls of the Van Gogh, feeling the swirls and imagining the pain of the artist. Yes, too heavy handed an analog.