Movie Review: Loving Vincent

A few days ago, I watched the 2017 movie Loving Vincent. It has nothing to do with anything else that I have written about, but it is a piece of media that I can use for content, so its relevance to anything isn't exactly important. This movie is a Polish-British co-production, so while it was funded by the Polish Film Institute, the voice actors are all from the British isles, including an Irish actor that I love, Chris O'Dowd, who I've seen in one of my favorite shows, The IT Crowd, and a short-running show called Moone Boy that I enjoyed while it lasted. Another member of the cast is Saoirse Ronan, the award-winning Irish actress whose name I always have to search to make sure I'm spelling it right.

Now, let me just say, this movie is genuinely one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. The entire movie is done completely in oil paint, in the style of Vincent Van Gogh. The movie was shot frame by frame, similar to a stop-motion movie, with artists painting each individual scene and making adjustments to the painting frame by frame. Regardless of my opinions on the plot or script of the movie, it truly is incredible to see the amount of work and skill that goes into PAINTING a full-length film. I didn't even think that that was possible, so, before I begin to provide my criticism of the movie, here are some of the painted shots that I found incredibly impressive

The characters and the scenery retain the same look throughout the entire movie, and the movie is made up of 65 THOUSAND painted frames. No matter what criticism I have to give on this movie, I still recommend that you watch it, just so that you can see how beautiful and impressive it is to have a movie be painted frame by frame. Now, on to what I don't like about this movie.

Although the title suggests that this is a rom-com starring the Dutch artist, Loving Vincent actually takes place a year after his suicide. The story follows Armand Roulin, the son of the postman that Vincent Van Gogh painted multiple times, including in this portrait:

Armand is tasked by his father to deliver a letter from the dead Vincent to his brother, Theo Van Gogh. Armand travels around, looking for Theo or for those who knew Vincent. Armand learns that Theo died shortly after Vincent's death, and he travels out to see Doctor Gachet, Vincent's doctor and the subject of a famous Van Gogh portrait. Unable to deliver the letter to Theo, Armand makes it his mission to learn about how Vincent died, as he committed suicide near Doctor Gachet's home. He speaks to many people who say Vincent looked happy close to his death and he decides that Vincent did not commit suicide, but was murdered. This is my main problem with the movie, and with a lot of media that depicts those who commit suicide. There is a tendency to call suicides "out of character" if the victim wasn't visibly filled with despair. This is a misunderstanding of mental health and of what it is that drives people to such a state of hopelessness that they are willing to take their own life. Pieces of media with this kind of idea are lazily written and push the narrative that if someone is not visibly in a state of deteriorating mental health, they are fine. At the very end of the movie, Armand is dispelled of the notion that Van Gogh was murdered, but nearly half of the movie is devoted to him playing detective and looking for motives. The truth is, it just isn't an interesting story, and the whole plot of letter-delivering and suicide-solving just feels contrived and poorly put together.

This movie really just feels like somebody had the idea to create a painted movie and then realized halfway through production that they hadn't written a plot.

It is beautiful enough that I recommend that you watch it, but the plot is bad enough that I don't expect you to like it. The art is stunning and it truly is an incredible feat to paint a full-length movie, especially with such a precise devotion to Van Gogh's style, but the plot is boring, half-baked, and ignorant of how mental health works. Even with the ending of Armand realizing that Van Gogh didn't need a reason to kill himself, it feels cheap and a little gross to pull out an hour and a half of content from a man's suicide. The art is beautiful and worth seeing, but I wish they had taken a bit more time to come up with a better idea than "let's have a man try to deliver a letter and then question whether somebody was sad enough to kill themself".

Loving Vincent: 2.5/5

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