Exploring the life of Vincent van Gogh through the film 'Loving Vincent’

'Loving Vincent' is a 2017 movie that explores the complicated life of Vincent van Gogh. Directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, the movie brings Van Gogh's paintings to life and lets them tell their sides of the stories or their encounters with Vincent. 

The narrating style of the movie and the overall look are what make the film stand out from all the other ones. Primarily produced in Poland, this ambitious project took nearly six years to finish, as the directors used a frame-by-frame animation technique and roughly 65,000 oil paintings on canvas to create it. The film depicts the landscapes and the overall world the way Van Gogh wanted people to see, with the brightest colours imaginable. 

The soul of the film: Telling his story through paintings 

The paintings have souls and convey unique stories the artist wants to tell. Through his art, the audience can imagine who the artist is as a person and the life he lived. Even though the movie takes place after the death of the painter, through his famous characters (paintings) the audience gets to know the story and some of the crucial moments of his life. By creating the movie entirely with his oil paintings, it feels as if the audience sees the world through the artist's eyes and forms a special connection with him that goes beyond the film. 

Using colour to evoke emotions

The stylistic choices in the movies primarily revolve around the use of colour. In the flashbacks featuring the painter, the scenes are entirely in black and white.

Perhaps through this tactic, the directors tried to show that even though his life was surrounded by darkness and pain, Van Gogh still managed to see the beauty in life and tried to heal his pain through the colours he created. It looks as if he wanted to heal himself, escape from the reality he had to face daily, and when doing so, bring happiness into his life. Perhaps because his art acted as a therapy for him and for all those peasants surrounding him, living in a similar type of poverty, the artist never stopped creating.