Loving Vincent
Film : Loving Vincent
Directed By : DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
Written by : DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman, Jacek Dehnel
It’s rare that the makers of a film would be so truthful with their title, that it absolves the audience from the responsibility of making sense of the film. It allows them to just sit back and watch the beauty, experience it for it is and how it makes them feel. And so it is heartbreaking to see how all the “reviews” focus on the filmmakers’ choice of handpainting each frame and awarding them an “A” for attempt. Or comparing the “rotoscope animation” with that of Linklater’s ‘Waking Life’. What purpose are those reviews serving other than making the reviewer sound like an intellectual pretentious snob who wants to let the world know that he has seen other films and knows the word “rotoscope”?
While watching the film I couldn’t help but notice how all the scenes where Vincent was alive were black and white, and the scenes where he was dead were vibrant and beautiful and painted with his signature strokes. He yearned to capture beauty in his art, but people refused to see that when he was alive, and seems like people refuse to see that now as well. It reminds of the last line of McLean’s ‘Starry, Starry Night’ -
They would not listen, they're not listening still Perhaps they never will.
So with my contempt for reviewers out of the way (it had to come out at some point, at least it’s on-brand), let’s talk about ‘Loving Vincent’.
It’s a film about a young man who is trying to find the right person to deliver Vincent’s last unposted letter. On his journey, he gets tied up in the ever so enticing mystery around Van Gogh’s death. There are multiple stories, multiple perspectives, multiple legends around Vincent - some of them add up, while others stand in complete contradiction to them. Needless to say, the film never really solves the mystery. It can’t. What it does do, however, is remind us of how Vincent wanted us to see the world. He once said - ‘I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say : he feels deeply, he feels tenderly’.
Vincent found beauty in everything, even Rene Secretan (the man who probably shot Vincent).
His work captures days and nights and sun and moon and stars and cafes and empty rooms and flowers and people he interacted with and places he went to and things he owned and, and death.
The film only tries to show the truth of how Vincent saw the world. The mystery around his death is just a tool to actually see how the people he came across in his life felt about him. Some of them hated him, some of them were jealous, some of them bullied him, some of them remembered him for the beauty he added to their lives, and some of them were in love with him, so much so they still put flowers on his grave. You hate them for not doing more, you hate them for not saving him, you hate them for not standing up for him. You blame them for his death even if they didn’t pull the trigger.
But by the end of it, you realize that Vincent never blamed them. Vincent saw them as himself - hurt, in pain, struggling. The only difference is that he had no shame in telling the world that he was hurting. He could still walk around and find beauty and paint, even when the whole town was freaking out about his missing ear.
So I just hope this film serves as a reminder that there is no shame in what we are going through, that there’s beauty in embracing our pain, and there’s beauty in being able to understand someone else’s pain.