Ultimate Steampunk
Jan. 24th, 2018 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiI'd missed Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge at Reading Film Theatre a couple of weeks ago due to illness, so I was pleased that last night I went to see Loving Vincent. The story is principally that of Armand Roulin, whose father, a postman, dispatches him, about a year after Vincent's death, to deliver a letter from Vincent to Theo van Gogh (by this time also dead). Armand travels first to Paris and then to Auvers-sur-Oise, in search of Theo's widow or another suitable recipient. In his task he meets several of the villagers who all have their own stories and recollections of Vincent, some of which cast doubt on the circumstances of his death.
But the story is only a part of the film, and probably wouldn't have drawn me on its own. What is perhaps unique about the film is that it's an animation, produced in oil painting, in the style of van Gogh. I had wondered whether this could be true - surely this could also have been done by CGI, and would have been more cost-effective - but the long list of sponsors at the start of the film, and the long list of animation artists (mostly in Poland and Greece) at the end, verifies it. The result is intensely atmospheric, and very cleverly done, as many of the characters were painted by van Gogh and are clearly based on those paintings. Like The Death of Stalin, there's no attempt to give faux-French accents to the characters, although in some of the flashbacks the voice of Vincent does seem to have a Dutch inflection. Amidst a strong cast I thought the voices and performances of Douglas Booth (Armand Roulin), Chris O'Dowd (Joseph Roulin), and John Sessions (Pere Tanguy) particularly stood out.
But the story is only a part of the film, and probably wouldn't have drawn me on its own. What is perhaps unique about the film is that it's an animation, produced in oil painting, in the style of van Gogh. I had wondered whether this could be true - surely this could also have been done by CGI, and would have been more cost-effective - but the long list of sponsors at the start of the film, and the long list of animation artists (mostly in Poland and Greece) at the end, verifies it. The result is intensely atmospheric, and very cleverly done, as many of the characters were painted by van Gogh and are clearly based on those paintings. Like The Death of Stalin, there's no attempt to give faux-French accents to the characters, although in some of the flashbacks the voice of Vincent does seem to have a Dutch inflection. Amidst a strong cast I thought the voices and performances of Douglas Booth (Armand Roulin), Chris O'Dowd (Joseph Roulin), and John Sessions (Pere Tanguy) particularly stood out.