Loving Vincent

2017 animated biopic

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Following the death of Van Gogh, a guy who delivered letters to his brother sends his son to get one last letter to Theo. That sends the son on a journey of discovery as he tries to get to the bottom of what happened to the troubled artist in his final days.

With thousands of hand-painted images swirling around my television screen, this really is beautiful to look at much of the time. I especially liked the contrast between the black and white flashback scenes and the impressionistic current day stuff, and there were some gorgeous transitions from one scene to the next. You see a lot of locales and themes that are familiar because Van Gogh immortalized them in his work--his room, a cafe, fields, even some crows. It was cool to see those moving and animated characters interacting within them. I'm not exactly sure how they animated in Van Gogh's style like this, but it was a nice tribute to the artist and appropriate way to tell his story.

Unfortunately, there's not much to that story. There's a mystery here, but I was a little bored with it. At one point, I had convinced myself that I was into the whole thing, but then I said, "Nope, I'm still a little bored." The novelty with the animation style wore off, and after a while, it felt like that style was making the story and the characters a little stiff. All the characters seemed arthritic and oddly expressionless. If that's the sacrifice that needed to be made to tell the story this way, it's probably worth it, but it didn't help create a narrative that was as engaging as it should have been.

Van Gogh himself remains enigmatic. There's nothing wrong with that, and in fact, I might prefer he remain an enigma. But this telling of his story doesn't do anything to make the enigma any more fascinating.

It's easy to appreciate the ambition and the craft and the love that went into this, and it's absolutely worth a watch for anybody even remotely interested in the artist or art in general or animation. I prefer the 1999 watercolor movie version of The Old Man and the Sea to this one although that one's only about twenty minutes. Maybe I prefer it because it's only about twenty minutes actually.