OVP: Loving Vincent (2017)

Film: Loving Vincent (2017)
Stars: Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Saoirse Ronan, Helen McCrory, Chris O'Dowd, Eleanor Tomlinson
Director: Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Firsts in film are rarer and rarer to come by, and almost always end up feeling a teensy bit gimmicky.  When I first heard about Loving Vincent, I was intrigued to see what it would look like, but wondering if perhaps the film itself might feel a little stilted.  For those unfamiliar, the picture is the first movie ever to be completely hand-painted.  Funded in part by a Kickstarter, the film itself is literally made up of 65,000 actual canvasses painted by 125 oil-painters, an unfathomably large task that comes across as impressive, but oftentimes stilted onscreen.  The movie itself never quite feels worth that effort, I'm sorry to say, though the ambition should at least be rewarded with you checking out Loving Vincent, or at least some of the opening scenes.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers upon a young man Armand Roulin (Booth), who is trying to deliver a letter that Vincent van Gogh wanted to send to his brother Theo before he died.  Armand is largely unimpressed with van Gogh, thinking him a bit of a fool and a madman, but is compelled to do so based on the friendship van Gogh had with his father, van Gogh's Postman (O'Dowd).  After learning of Theo's death, Armand goes to the town where van Gogh died in search of Vincent's psychiatrist, Dr. Gachet (Flynn), whom he believes is the secret to understanding why van Gogh killed himself, and perhaps learning something about the genius behind the beautiful paintings.  The film spends most of its time here, with Armand meeting with a bunch of witnesses to van Gogh's final days, and along the way changing his opinion of van Gogh, and in particular about his death.

The film's central story is really compelling, in my opinion.  While I have studied a touch of art history, I wasn't aware of the recent speculation that van Gogh did not, in fact, kill himself (as has been assumed for years), but instead that he may have been murdered, perhaps by a drunken young man who tormented van Gogh (the artist was regularly bullied by the young men of the village, particularly over his removed ear).  The movie, as a result, is really interesting even if it isn't always successfully executed.  We leave not really knowing much about the actual characters onscreen, or what drives them.  Armand as our narrator, for example, may have changed his opinion of van Gogh but we know relatively little about the man himself.  This lack of character development wouldn't fly in a live-action film, and we should probably hold an animated film to the same standards.  Still, though, it's a riveting theory even if it's hard to prove true at this point, and I'm glad that it allowed me to pore over a dozen articles or so after the picture to help me better know the artist behind all of the beautiful paintings.

Of course, no one is really planning on seeing Loving Vincent for the story (well, except me, apparently), but to see whether the paintings themselves come alive onscreen.  There's a fascinating touch of reality meeting the magic of van Gogh's creations with all of the actors being outfitted in the costumes of van Gogh's most famous portraits.  You see, for example, Douglas Booth's face on the famed yellow coat and black fedora of the real-life Armand Roulin or Saoirse Ronan donning the high-necked white dress of Marguerite Gachet.  There were several times during the film where I said "wow" audibly, though the audience only agreed with me when it came to our first closeup of Dr. Gachet, people gasping in the theater as we saw Jerome Flynn's face so eerily matching the Portrait of Dr. Gachet, once famously the most expensive painting in the world.  The movie is beautiful in the way they incorporate these actors into van Gogh's world, but it still feels rather stilted and uneven in the way that they try to impress van Gogh into cinema.  The inevitable and iconic use of his classic The Starry Night comes across as a bit forced, and like you're squinting more than anything else.  All-in-all, it's a very impressive failure, but I don't think it ended up approaching anything truly landmark-we won't be seeing films like this in the future, even if perhaps it's a cool enough concept for us to want a look at Monet or Renoir in such a manner.

All-in-all, I'm giving this three stars because that's sort of my threshold into whether or not I would recommend a movie.  I don't know if it's worth that, but the story is compelling, the artistry intriguing if not always successful, and that feels like enough to want from a picture, particularly in a year that has been notoriously weak when it comes to animated films.  Check it out, particularly on a big screen if you can, as you want as large of canvas to peruse as possible.