loving vincent...

Moira and I went to the Watershed this afternoon (my second visit in three days!) to see the much-acclaimed “Loving Vincent” film directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman.
The Watershed’s blurb describes it thus: “The world’s first fully painted feature film brings together the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to tell his extraordinary life story – and every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil painting, hand-painted by a small army of 125 professionals”. All these oil paintings are created in the style of van Gogh to provide a beautiful, animated end product – a truly magical, astonishing achievement… which apparently took seven years to come to fruition.
I’d previously seen some advance publicity and felt sure that the film would certainly be worth SEEING… but I didn’t know much more than that. Well, it tells the (imagined) story of van Gogh’s final days and his controversial death (a bullet wound to the stomach: was it an accident or a suicide?).

I’d actually prepared myself to be disappointed by the film (after all my prior expectations), but am very happy to say that I thought it was very impressive and very beautifully put together. I think my only reservation is that I feel that the film is in a danger of making the artist something of a celebrity cliché (or perhaps we’d already done this ourselves by our admiration and adulation?). In just a little over 10 years, van Gogh produced more than 800 paintings – that’s a pretty incredible achievement(!) – and it’s left me wanting to understand more about the artist’s life (and his work).

But back to the film… some of the images/frames worked more convincingly than others but, overall, I thought it was a really impressive film… and an astonishing achievement.

Very, very well worth seeing – you’ll be amazed!
PS: I’d chatted to Iris about the film a few days ago and said that I thought it was quite remarkable that van Gogh, who had died so young (he was 37 years old), had become one of the most famous artists of all time and yet he’d never sold a single painting. She immediately corrected me and said: “actually, Grandad, he sold two” (according to the film credits at the end, it seems that he actually sold ONE in his lifetime, but I love that Iris had a view about him!). x