Loving Vincent (2017): The Beauty of Handcrafted Frames
Written by Ifal (Kru’21)
“I want to touch people with my art, I want them to say : he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.” — Vincent Van Gogh
The trend of A.I.-generated artwork which has been growing rapidly lately, reminds me of this movie. Not because this film was ahead of its time by using A.I. in the process, but otherwise. This film is a ‘landmark’ that reminds us how beautiful a work created by human hands is.
Loving Vincent was the first feature film to be fully hand-painted. A total of 65,000 frames were painted by 125 painters from various countries who have been selected by the directors, Dorota Kobriela and Hugh Welchman. Most of the frames are directly taken from Van Gogh’s paintings with a few tweaks and adding movement to some of the details to bring them to life. This whole complex process took six years to be completed.
This movie tells a story about none other than the legendary painter himself, Vincent Van Gogh (Robert Gulaczyk). However, what’s interesting is that Vincent is not the main character in this story; instead, he is the theme. We are invited to explore Vincent’s world through the perspective of a young man named Armand Roulin (Douglas Booth), son of Joseph Roulin (Chris O’Dowd), who was Vincent’s friend when he was alive. A year after Vincent’s suicide, Joseph, who is a postman, asks Armand to deliver Vincent’s last letter to his younger brother, Theo Van Gogh (Cezary Lukaszewicz). At first, Armand refused the request, but after Joseph explained the irregularities in Vincent’s suicide, Armand’s interest arose to trace directly to the life path of the painter who was often considered insane.
In his journey, Armand met various people who had connections with Vincent, such as Adeline Ravoux (Eleanor Tomlinson) who is the daughter of the owner of the inn where Vincent lives, Marguerite Gachet (Saoirse Ronan), an upper-class woman who reportedly close to Vincent, and some other interesting characters with their own interesting story to tell. The different perspectives of Vincent’s story from each person Armand met made him get to know Vincent’s true personality more and find a bit of light on Vincent’s odd death.
The script that was written by Dorota Kobriela, Hugh Welchman, and Jacek Dehnel succeeded in presenting a fairly simple biographical story. Still, it was packaged into a mystery story that aroused the audience’s curiosity. Each part of the story is arranged so that it becomes a puzzle piece that the main character needs to find to conclude this movie. The use of Armand Roulin as the main character is also an interesting choice because it is able to represent the audience’s who are unfamiliar with the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh. Even though this film is not entirely accurate to the true story of Vincent Van Gogh, the storyline presented is quite fresh compared to the interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh’s life story in other media, especially about his death.
The visuals of this film are also one of the main reasons why this film made such an impression on me. The complicated process of six years of painting each frame paid off with a very satisfying result, which is a very appropriate medium to convey the story of this legendary painter. The audience can see and feel every meaningful stroke of oil paint on every cloud, sky, tree, and building, to the facial expressions of each character. Many of the landscapes and character models are taken directly from Vincent Van Gogh’s iconic paintings, so this film really takes us in and explores the world in each of his paintings. There is a difference in visualization in the form of using black and white in each flashback scene which seems to show how Vincent’s past was so dark and full of his struggles to maintain his sanity. On the other hand, the present-day storyline is depicted through the many colors in Vincent’s paintings, illustrating how he was finally able to let go of all his suffering and made an impact on the world even after he was gone.
Despite all of its unique aspects, Loving Vincent is not without its flaws. The use of oil paint strokes as the visual style is surely beautiful, but it can be overwhelming sometimes especially at scenes that were shot with dynamic camera movements. Considering that Vincent Van Gogh’s painting style uses a lot of small strokes, the audience can easily get lost at the moving lines and dots that were presented in front of their eyes. The other problem that I had is that some of the flashback scenes that feature Vincent’s appearance feels a little bit off. Then I later found out that his voice was not the actor’s (Robert Gulaczyk) actual voice, but instead dubbed by a Dutch actor named Jochum ten Haaf. It’s a pretty reasonable choice because they probably want him to have a Dutch accent since Vincent Van Gogh is Dutch, but it didn’t really match the actor’s acting and they often try to hide his lips movement from the camera while he was talking. However, it’s not really a huge problem that could ruin the movie at all since he didn’t talk that much throughout the movie.
It has been 133 years since Vincent Van Gogh left this world. Even so, appreciation and tributes have always emerged to this day to appreciate the father of modern art, one of which is of film. Loving Vincent is a love letter to Vincent Van Gogh that art connoisseurs and even ordinary people can enjoy through strokes of oil paint that are arranged beautifully like the words of a poem. This film is also a celebration of human art which is a proof as well as a reminder that no matter how sophisticated technology becomes, the soul of an artist will never be replaced.
