Review of Loving Vincent: The Impossible Dream

There has been nothing quite like this film's impact, one based on thousands of brush strokes as Van Gogh's life in a French village is recounted by those he painted. Though the film sounds like a gimmick similar to those giant recreations of his paintings people paid to sit in, it is much more a reflection of both the man's style and his art.

There are many excellent biopics about Vincent and a few letter-perfect performances, among those by William Defoe and Kirk Douglas, but no films attempting to get into the minds of those with whom he shared time during his last years in the country--this is animation as I have never seen it, and each stroke altered a little bit with each frame of film gives the characters an electric charge, almost as if they were unknowingly inhabited for a while by the spirit of the Father of Modern Art.

So many of the portraits that most of us are familiar with come to life in movement similar to that we experience when viewing an authentic Van Gogh in a museum, and if the viewer has not had that experience, this might be the next best thing. It is a remarkable achievement, an entertaining mystery combined with some serious reflection on the last days of a landmark artist.