It may seem unfair to rate a film one hasn’t watched to the end, but after an hour of watching ‘Loving Vincent’, directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, I simply can’t bring myself to finish it. A poor script and wooden acting with emotionless voices as if generated by AI made it painful to watch.
From my early youth I was an admirer of impressionism. To this day I fondly recall discussions about art with my literature teacher. For her, art ended with Impressionism; for me, this movement was the beginning of true art. So, that’s why I’ve wanted to see ‘Loving Vincent’ since I first heard about it, but only now did I get the opportunity.
I knew it was an animation and in the style of a Van Gogh painting, but I was not aware that it was a live-action film that was later repainted frame by frame—it’s more complicated than that, but technical details are not important here, and putting them aside, I’ve seen animations like this in the past, and neither then nor now was I impressed with the result. In fact, the use of Van Gogh’s painting style and the fact that individual frames were painted by hand by different artists made the result visually difficult to bear for more than a few minutes, mainly because of the flickering of every element. To be frank, I have sincere concerns that an epileptic person could have a seizure during the film.
I really can’t understand how this film got so many positive reviews and high ratings. The number of artists who took part in this project and the effort put in are impressive, I admit, but it’s not enough if the result is at best mediocre. But it just so happens that just before watching this film, I saw ‘Carrington’, directed by Christopher Hampton, so maybe my expectations were a bit too high, which is why the disappointment is all the greater.
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