The roiling landscape scenes betray the redundance of animating images that already sizzle with energy, but the portraiture works beautifully, especially because the actors who supply the characters' voices and visages are first-rate.
There's so much to do in life and so little time. Should I go out to a movie tonight, or visit the art museum? "Loving Vincent" is the closest you can get to doing both simultaneously.
Aided by a fine score courtesy Clint Mansell, your patience will be rewarded as long as you focus on the presentation beyond the slow pacing and all the conjecture.
Visually, it's spectacular. Conceptually, it's jaw-dropping to simply considering the effort that went into this. The story, however, doesn't always hold its own.
There's lots of love (and loveliness) on display here: the color paintings are rendered after the manner of the modern master, and there's a stubborn refusal to either glamorize a suffering soul or demonize those who may have helped to seal his fate.
It relies on forced exposition to push the story forward and often recalls bad dinner theater, and is certainly the least interesting way to tell van Gogh's tale.
By adding hand drawing to every moment of the story, the team hoped to add an unusual dimension to the story. They did. It feels unforgivably gimmicky.
