This semester I’m fortunate enough to be studying at the University of Nottingham in England, which means I’m doing my best to explore the city and take it all in. I recently discovered the Broadway Cinema and Arts Center in Hockley, an independent cinema that in 2009 was voted ‘best in the world’ by Total Film Magazine, and quite frankly, I can see why. Not only can you get coffee and cake to bring into the movie which is a major win, but the cinema also dedicates itself to showing a wide variety of films and making them accessible to the community.
On Monday the ninth, I went to the Broadway Cinema for the U.K. and Ireland premiere of the movie Loving Vincent, which I have been excited to see for ages. Directed and written by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, Loving Vincent tells the story of a young man, Armand Roulin discovering many conflicting stories about Vincent Van Gogh’s death and trying to piece them together. Notably, the film is the first ever oil painted feature length film. To create the movie, actors were filmed in front of green screens and then over 100 painters recreated each of the movie’s 65,000 frames with oil paint in the style of Vincent Van Gogh.
I was completely blown away by the experience of seeing this film, especially on a big screen. It was a technical masterwork with so much color and movement in every shot that it was almost surreal to watch. The style, including direct references to numerous works by Van Gogh made the movie feel like a labor of love by the writers and artists telling the story almost as though a tribute to Van Gogh. I loved that the story was more of a mystery than a biography as Armand realizes that the stories he hears about Van Gogh’s death don’t match up. Welchman and Kobiela constructed the film with elements of a film noir style which make the story more intriguing and the atmosphere more alluring. The score, written by Clint Mansell, solidified the atmosphere, intensifying the somber and melancholy mood.
I enjoyed the story, which had both comedic moments and absolutely gut wrenching scenes about Van Gogh at the end of his life. However, I did find that in some places, the pacing of the story was somewhat off with unnecessarily long flashbacks or digressions into a mystery that in some places fell flat. All the same, the incredible visual technique made up for the places where the story started to lag, and it seemed to me that the movie did what good art tends to do — creating conversation, in this case about the art, the story, and even about the nature of art and mental illness as well as inspiring new art.
Because I caught the premiere of the film, a live Q + A was broadcast from the National Gallery in London, where co-director and writer Hugh Welchman, producer Ivan Mactaggart, actors Douglas Booth and Helen McCrory and painter Sarah Wimperis answered questions from the crowd and on Twitter about the seven year process of producing the film. It was insightful to hear more about the process of starting with an idea and ending with thousands of oil painted frames in the style of Van Gogh. At the surface level, the film is a gorgeous tribute to Van Gogh, but it also tells a deeper and more universal story about love, loss and art.
Sources:
Main image used with permission, courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum