seen on 25 November 2017
Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman direct Douglas Booth, Saiorse Ronan, Chris O'Dowd, Eleanor Tomlinson, John Sessions, Helen McCrory, Aidan Turner and Robert Gulaczyk in an extraordinary film about the circumstances surrounding the death of Vincent van Gogh in 1890.
The most extraordinary thing about the film is that every frame is painted - it took dozens of artists over seven years to complete it. The scenes were shot with the actors in costume, but what is presented to the audience is a shimmering view of the world rendered in van Gogh's mature painting style - indeed many of his genuine paintings form the starting point for scenes in the film, and the characters are dressed as van Gogh painted them. Flashbacks and reminiscences are presented in a sober black and white, but as young Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth), the son of the postmaster (Chris O'Dowd) responsible for dealing with Vincent's voluminous correspondence, attempts to discover what happened in July 1890 he is constantly presented in a world of vivid colour in which surfaces seem to blend into background.
The question posed by the narrative of the film is whether Vincent in fact shot himself, or whether he was covering up an accidental shooting by a supposed friend. His cryptic words that 'no-one is to blame' could refer to either possibility; those who knew him have only their own impressions of his situation and his relations with others in the town as a basis to draw conclusions, and Armand discovers that there can be no definitive answer - different people have very different and even contradictory ideas of what was happening. The film is very clever in raising the questions but leaving them unresolved, while at the same time giving poignant expression to the difficulties of the painter's mental disposition, the great-heartedness of his emotional responses, and the waste of a life cut short.
Curious to hear the unvarnished regional accents of the actors emerging (as it were) from the very French van Gogh portraits; curious to watch an entire film of pastiche painted images in motion; mesmerising to see those familiar solid paint strokes flicker into movement as if the light is always flickering and shimmering in the sky and on the fields and buildings of Provence and the clothes and faces of the characters. Somehow, against all expectation, it works.
The film's website http://lovingvincent.com has details of the cast, the crew and the process.
