Loving Vincent
##############

:date: 2018-03-22T08:03:28
:category: faith
: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 a 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