Loving Vincent
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:date: 2018-03-22T08:03:28
:category: literature
:tags: review, film
Movie_ “Loving Vincent” is certainly an experience worthy of the
tickets to go to the cinema. The main idea of it is to make
“animated” film by painting endless number of quality oil
paintings in the style of Vincent van Gogh about the painter
himself. I have been warned_ that this idea is actually by far
the strongest part of the film, and that the story of the film
itself is by far the weakest part of it. I won’t do the spoilers
here, but yes the end comes rather flat.
The visual side has been however troubling as well. It is truly
beautiful, there is no question about that, but this film showed
me the great difference between pictures (especially ones in the
tradition of post-van Gogh painting, what an irony!) and films.
The great pictures (in all traditions, it applies perfectly well
even to Rembrandt’s “Return of the prodigal son”) are best when
they don’t tell the whole story, but when they are more
a catalyst to make a viewer sit down and think her own story.
From this point of view, van Gogh was (with a bit of artistic
license) the first painter who stressed this role of pictures
even more by omitting a lot of realism and leaving just those
catalyst parts of the image.
On the other hand, the biggest beauty of every film is *a story*.
Some films are beautiful, have pretty pictures, but what makes or
kills it is how the story is made. There is endless list of
beautiful pictures which lack a good story (the review of this
film points as an example to “`What Dreams May Come`_”). I don’t
want to deal now with quality (or lack of thereof) of the story
of this film, but I want to emphasize that perception of a film
is quite different from the perception of a picture. This
difference in perception made me torn to two sides by two
different both unpleasant feelings. While beautiful pictures made
me feel constantly “Wait! This was a beautiful picture, I would
like to watch it properly!” I had also constantly that feeling
that I forgot my glasses at home (no, I don’t need glasses for
watching films yet). Images in films are not supposed to be
abstract, thought-inducing experience, they are suppose to reveal
and deliver a story. I had that constant feeling “I would love to
see how this girl looks *in reality*.”
So, my conclusion is that it was a great idea. I don’t care that
much for the quality (or not) of the film as a film, or
a detective story. It was a great experience, I came to new
appreciation of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, but do I welcome
the inevitable avalanche of imitations of this film which are to
be expected? No, I think once was enough.
.. _Movie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_Vincent
.. _warned:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/loving-vincent-2017
.. _`What Dreams May Come`:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/what-dreams-may-come-1998
