THERE is a poignant film that’s touching cineastes. Singularly, its sentiment doesn’t come from content—dramatic as the story may be—but from a technique. Loving Vincent is the title of this feature film, which combines animation and scenes hand-painted by more than a hundred top oil painters, as the press notes tell us. Well, there’s no need convincing us: the end-result speaks for itself. Actors are still
present but their figures had been painted over. The fusion of painted colors, characters and action creates a series of canvas, as if the works of Vincent van Gogh, the artist around whom the story revolves, has done the narrative.
One could go on talking about the techniques employed in the film and the painstaking research done. We’re told, for example, how certain scenes that appear as backdrop were altered in terms of the season. The many letters written by van Gogh to his brother, Theo, were used to clarify, articulate or even change the time and the climate of particular scenes now glorified within the frames. And yet, these things, however magnificent, remain as trivia when placed side by side with the emotions generated by the actions and characters in the film
Vincent van Gogh is ever-present in this narrative despite the fact that by the time the story has unfolded, he is not anymore physically present in the site of the story. One can even say Loving Vincent is no more about van Gogh than our memory of him. We are, including the torment of van Gogh, his refraction. But if there’s one thing which makes the film seductive and engaging, it is, yes, the loving tribute given by its directors, Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman.
The story begins a year after the death of van Gogh. Postman Roulin has sent his son, Armand, to look for Theo. Armand’s task is to deliver the letter of van Gogh to his brother. Armand finds no sense in handing a letter from one who is already dead. Little does Armand know that Theo has also died after his brother’s passing on. Here begins the journey of Armand, who discovers more about the people around van Gogh and, in the village, the mirror upon which the contradictions about the artist abound.
There is Adeline, who’s minding the inn where van Gogh stayed. The woman is fond of van Gogh even as she remembers him to be a quiet man with strange habits. Adeline is there when van Gogh is said to have shot himself. She’s there in the inn when he dies.
Armand meets also Marguerite, the daughter of Dr. Gachet, the person who takes care of van Gogh after the latter’s release from the asylum. Armand befriends the boatman in the river who sees in van Gogh a charm that woos Marguerite. The woman, upon being questioned by Armand, denies she was ever close to van Gogh. In the next meeting, Marguerite confesses she was close to the artist but it was never an intimate relationship. There’s the same boatman, seemingly the only one who treated van Gogh as a person. Then there’s Armand.
All of these individuals were captured by van Gogh in portraits that, as Don McLean in his song describes, “hung in empty halls/frameless heads on nameless walls.” In the case of the boatman, his blue jacket is the color of a van Gogh sky and Armand’s yellow suit remind us of wheafields, in yellows that only van Gogh imagined the vast meadows to be. The walls have no names and the halls are empty because in his life, van Gogh was never honored by any prestigious gallery or exhibit hall.
The bitterness and sweetness of it all is that—much, much later, very much later—many of his portraits sold for millions. The Portrait of Dr. Gachet fetched for some $80 million, an amount enough to make Theo’s life comfortable and van Gogh the supreme capitalist of his day.
The world never understood van Gogh. This film’s worthy contribution is its appeal for a new way of seeing van Gogh. For those who see only van Gogh in the dark nights of his soul, the film may disappoint. There are many rays of sunshine filtering through the life of this artist. Van Gogh is an artist who sees things differently. His eyes afford us a world that is beautiful because he has sought to paint a field or a flower or a face over and over again. Some people may find joys and explanations through the manic van Gogh. But, like the film, I choose to see van Gogh as the quintessential humanist. It’s not anymore crucial to belabor the fact that Starry Night was painted while he took in the early morn through his asylum window.
He started painting when he was 27; by 37, he was dead. With more than 800 works in oil together with sketches and drawings, van Gogh died in poverty.
Who killed van Gogh? Did he commit suicide? Was he a demon or a genius? Those are basic questions and they need not be answered. Loving Vincent is a film of responses and replies, of affirming the beautiful soul of an artist who saw the world in ways many did not and in ways many of us would not. His works are the reason for us to celebrate him.
Perhaps, more than ever, and purists and art critics will giggle, but the composer Don McLean was right when he said: “This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you”’
Regard the title, for that is the wellspring of the magic of this film. Loving Vincent sounds, at first, as an exhortation for us to love the artist. In the film, it is actually the closing line of the many letters Vincent van Gogh wrote to his dear brother, Theo. The brother was the one who provided the art materials that Vincent could not afford. Always, van Gogh, signed, “Loving, Vincent.”
Vincent van Gogh was a loving person and he loved truly and purely. I like to remember this titan of an artist that way. I, now, love Vincent van Gogh and all his paintings that showed us the days, the fields, the flowers, the people in a pure, heretofore, undiscovered light.
Postscript: For film lovers, there is a film done by Kurosawa, titled Yume, or Dreams. In one of the dreams, a persona representing the dreamer, Kurosawa, is seen at the gallery viewing intensely van Gogh’s Wheatfield With Crows. The character enters the painting and finds himself walking on grounds and grasses painted in the recognizable brash and bold strokes of van Gogh’s. The person is looking for van Gogh and finds him in the middle of the wheatfield. Played by Martin Scorsese, the van Gogh here is an intense man with red beard, anxious to paint and paint lest he loses the light. The dreamer wakes up from the dream when crows fly from the wheatfield.
1 comment
A friend commented that the way the narratives unfolded in the film mirrors Kurosawa’s Rashomon.