Loving Vincent

Loving Vincent (2017) is set a year after Van Gogh's death and consists entirely of oil paintings. Armand Roulin, at his father's insistence, tries to deliver Van Gogh's last letter to his brother. The brother has died too. Looking for someone to give it to, Armand starts asking about the painter's final weeks: his doctor, the innkeeper's daughter, the boatman, the landlord. Each of them says something different. The real question is whether it was suicide. The film imposes no answer; it sets the testimonies side by side and leaves the contradictions. The method is the film itself. It was shot conventionally with actors first, then every frame was painted by hand in oils on canvas. A hundred and twenty five painters worked on it and around sixty five thousand frames were produced. Eight hundred and fifty three canvases were used, each repainted an average of seventy six times, because the background, the expression and the movement change from frame to frame. The project ran over five years. The style is taken from Van Gogh's own paintings: the brush strokes are visible, the sky turns, the colours are saturated. Most of the characters are people he actually painted and are designed from those portraits. The flashbacks are in black and white and drawn realistically; the present is colour and the past is not. It is a Polish and British co-production. It was nominated for the animated feature Oscar. The plot is thin and that is the main objection; it is constructed as a mystery and does not solve it. It runs 94 minutes. Good for: animation, painting, and Van Gogh. Less good for: the constantly moving brush strokes bother some viewers and the story is slight.