Loving Vincent

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Movie
German title Loving Vincent
Original title Loving Vincent
Country of production Poland ,
United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2017
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 8
Rod
Director Dorota Kobiela ,
Hugh Welchman
script Jacek Dehnel ,
Dorota Kobiela,
Hugh Welchman
production Sean M. Bobbitt ,
Ivan Mactaggart ,
Hugh Welchman
music Clint Mansell
camera Tristan Oliver ,
Łukasz Żal
cut Dorota Kobiela ,
Justyna Wierszyńska
occupation
synchronization

Loving Vincent is an animated , as thriller built biopic of Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman , dealing with the circumstances of Vincent van Gogh's busy death. The film is considered to be the first full-length animated film in which scenes shot with real people were reproduced in oil, frame by frame. In the film, Vincent van Gogh's images come to life to investigate the death of their creator and at the same time tell his life story. The plot is borrowed from the 800 letters that the artist wrote to people around him in the course of his life. The film celebrated its premiere on June 12, 2017 as part of the Festival d'Animation Annecy and was released in German and Austrian cinemas on December 28, 2017.

action

Vincent Willem van Gogh 088.jpg
Vincent Van Gogh Joseph Roulin.jpg


Armand Roulin (left), son of Vincent van Gogh's postman Joseph Roulin (right), tries in the film together with other portraits that have come to life to track down the circumstances of the artist's death.

The young Armand Roulin is unexpectedly commissioned by his father, the postmaster Joseph Roulin, to deliver a letter from the famous painter Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, after the artist committed suicide in a cornfield after a stay in a mental hospital Has. When he arrives at Theo's last known whereabouts, he has to learn that Theo died six months after Vincent. Armand decides to find out more about the eccentric painter and is soon completely fascinated by him.

When he suspects that Van Gogh's death in the end was not a suicide at all, Armand goes on a search for the truth. He had conversations with friends of Van Gogh from the last months of his life, such as the boatswain, and learned the whole fate of the man who would soon become an icon with his art. Van Gogh himself appears in black and white flashbacks from time to time. In the credits, Van Gogh's paintings are compared with those in the film.

production

Biographical background

Vincent van Gogh , whose circumstances of death are examined in the film, was a Dutch painter and draftsman who is considered one of the founders of modern painting . According to the current state of knowledge, he left behind 864 paintings and over 1000 drawings, all of which were created in the last ten years of his life. Van Gogh conducted an extensive correspondence, which contains a wealth of references to his painterly work and is itself of literary rank. His main work is stylistically assigned to post-impressionism . Vincent van Gogh died at the age of 37 after a gunshot wound that he is said to have inflicted on himself. Before that, his health had repeatedly suffered from episodes of his mental illness. While van Gogh was only able to sell a few pictures during his lifetime, his works achieved record prices at auctions after his death .

Staff, film title and film music

The film was made as a British-Polish co-production. The Polish painter and animation artist Dorota Kobiela and her husband, the British film producer Hugh Welchman , directed and also wrote the screenplay for the film together with Jacek Dehnel . Welchman was awarded an Oscar in 2008 for his animated short film Peter and the Wolf . The inspiration for Loving Vincent was a sentence that Van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother: “Well, the truth is that we cannot speak otherwise than with the help of our works.” (Original “Wel, de waarheid is, dat We can't speak otherwise than by middel van onze schilderijen. ”) The makers of the film took this statement literally and let the last year of his life be told in their film from the perspective of those portrayed by him. The people and stories shown are in turn inspired by 120 works and 800 letters that van Gogh left behind. The artist wrote the letters he received to people around him in the course of his life. In these he had processed important events up to his dramatic death. These letters also include those from Vincent van Gogh to his beloved brother Theo. Kerstin Decker from Tagesspiegel notices that no one in Loving Vincent was invented.

Welchman had also researched about 30 biographies, academic journals and exhibition books about van Gogh on the artist's life, including the biographies Vincent: A Retrospective by Julius Meier-Graefe from 1920 and Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. Even if the film Vincent van Gogh - A Life in Passion (original title Lust for Life ) from 1956, which tells of the tragic existence of the painter, was brilliant in many ways, according to Welchman, this was exactly what she was in her film: "We wanted to get away from portraying 'crazy' Vincent and more try to bring out the Vincent as he expressed himself in his letters and his paintings." In addition, fictional elements were mixed into the film. The film was ultimately created from hand-painted pictures in the style of the painter.

The title of the film is not only borrowed from the farewell greeting with which van Gogh signed his letters to his brother, but also a commitment from the director, who studied painting and then film directing in Warsaw, according to Christina Bylow from the Berliner Zeitung .

The score was composed by Clint Mansell . About the collaboration with the film composer Kobiela said: “Music for me was the emotional heart of this film. I started writing the script to his music, and we continued writing the various drafts to his soundtracks. It was a very memorable day in my life when Clint agreed to be the composer. ”English singer Lianne La Havas produced a cover of Don McLean's song Vincent (also known as Starry Starry Night ) as the final credits song . The soundtrack for the film, including this cover, was released by Milan Records as a download on September 22, 2017 and shortly afterwards also in physical form.

Filming and casting

For the production of the film, BreakThru Productions had specially developed the so-called PAWs (Painting Animation Work Stations), special workstations at which 30 painters painted many thousands of frames by hand in Van Gogh's style in order to breathe movement and life into the 80-minute film. The painted pictures were often applied to previously shot reference material by the actors involved. For this purpose, the actors were recorded by the cameramen Tristan Oliver and Łukasz Żal, first in sets that were copied from the works of van Gogh, or in front of the green screen so that the paintings could be inserted afterwards along with the computer-generated animations and the real figure of the actor with it merged into the painting. Following this example, the participating artists painted the first picture of each scene by hand in oil. A photo was then taken before the footage was advanced one frame. From this point on, the painters only had to make changes to the existing painting for each additional picture. Under the direction of Kobilea, the team of artists stayed as faithful as possible to the original style of the artist. For The Starry Night , the opening sequence of the film, 600 individual images were required, which were created by three painters in 14 months. A team of 125 people had created 1,400 animations in the style of van Gogh, which processed around 100 of his well-known masterpieces and, using this principle, produced a total of 57,600 individual images for 80 minutes of playing time. According to other sources, it was 65,000 individual images. The oil paintings that were photographed for the film measure about one meter by sixty centimeters.

That of Vincent van Gogh portrayed Dr. In the film, Paul Gachet, together with his daughter and Armand Roulin, tries to clear up the circumstances of the death of its creator
The film poster shows a version of a self-portrait by van Gogh, modified by the makers of the film, facing the viewer

Loving Vincent is considered to be the first completely real-life film that was completely converted into individual oil paintings using this technique and the first full-length animated film to be produced in this way. Although the Russian director Alexander Petrow had tried something similar with The Old Man and the Sea based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway , in which he drew the individual pictures with oil paints on glass and changed the drawing for each picture by hand, but it was the film , for which Petrov won an Oscar for a short film with a length of 20 minutes.

The well-known Dr. Gachet was played by Jerome Flynn in the film . Saoirse Ronan played his daughter Marguerite, Douglas Booth and Chris O'Dowd played Armand Roulin and his father Joseph, Aidan Turner took on the role of boatswain, and the Polish theater actor Robert Gulaczyk played their creator in flashbacks that were traced in black and white Vincent van Gogh . Kobiela said: “We didn't want to make up Vincent-style paintings without basing them in his real paintings. And we wanted to differentiate the 'present' in the film, and the flashbacks - the present day is in Vincent's painting style, and the flashbacks are in black and white. We were also very worried that 94 minutes of intense Vincent style would be too much visually for an audience, and the interspersing of the black and white sequences would give people a break, and allow them to more fully appreciate Vincent's work. "

The final production took place at Three Mills Studios in London and started in April 2015. The project took six years to complete. The production cost was around $ 5 million.

Movie poster and marketing

The film poster shows a modified version of the self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh , which is turned towards the viewer .

On October 14, 2017, a new Van Gogh exhibition started in the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch , which, in addition to the famous sunflowers, also showed pictures, photos and videos from the film Loving Vincent and thus gave a detailed insight into the creation of the painted animation film by the development of the scenario down to fascinating details of the creation process. For this purpose, around 100 works were distributed across six museum rooms. It was also shown how the team of artists found solutions when scenes required deviations from Van Gogh's original painting. For example, in the recurring case that van Gogh's paintings did not have the right size of the cinema screen. In addition, the Painting Animation Work Station was an element of the exhibition, at which every week from Thursday to Sunday an artist who also worked on the film created new animations in oil using works from the Brabant period by Vincent van Gogh. The exhibition at Noordbrabants Museum, which houses a Vincent van Gogh permanent exhibition, was on view until January 28, 2018.

publication

The film premiered on June 12, 2017 as part of the Festival d'Animation Annecy and was released in Austrian and German cinemas on December 28, 2017.

reception

Age rating

In the US, the film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA . In Germany the film is FSK 6 . The statement of reasons for the release states: “The entire film adopts the special aesthetics of van Gogh's painting; it is staged calmly and the plot is understandable for children from 6 years of age. Occasionally there are violent clashes, but they do not seem overly dramatic and can be put into the context of the story by primary school children. "

Reviews and grossing results

The film has so far won over 85 percent of Rotten Tomatoes ' critics .

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle says Loving Vincent is conceptually and technically brilliant and for 10 minutes, maybe 15, one of the greatest animated films of all time, but since it is a 95-minute film and, like any film, the story is in the Further progress becomes more important than the concept or the technique, flatten the narrative after the first 10 minutes, and if this becomes flat, this also happens with the film.

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian says the film is an impressive but strangely insane exercise in style that leads one to believe that you can put together a whole world of images. Conversely, Loving Vincent doesn't really tell much about the work and life of Vincent van Gogh , and the film seems increasingly depressing and even a little pointless, according to Bradshaw.

Julia Voss from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung describes Loving Vincent as the most beautiful and most surprising art film of the year: “Who would have thought that a film would be needed to recall the old magic trick of painting ? Loving Vincent shows in every picture how a world of color and lines is created . And the miracle that you can't get enough of is that you see the trick and still get the illusion. ”As if the suction of the images weren't enough, Voss continues, that of the plot is added, and thus the film is also a clever detective piece.

Christina Bylow from the Berliner Zeitung thinks that the oil painting animation technique is convincing, so that one can speak of a miracle. Bylow emphasizes the glow, waves, the staggering of the rooms and the light dramaturgy in this film: "The craft behind the digital technology remains tangible, gives the images something warm and tangible."

Kerstin Decker from Tagesspiegel says if van Gogh's pictures, these icons of painting on the threshold of modernity , belonging to many people for mental inventory begin to move, whether it is as if one were again in the invention of cinema here .

In November 2017 it was announced that the film had been selected by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, from which the nominations for the best animated film at the 2018 Academy Awards will be determined.

The film's worldwide revenue from theatrical screenings has so far been $ 42.2 million. In Germany, the film reached number 1 in the German arthouse cinema charts in the last week of December 2017 and has so far recorded 344,452 visitors.

Awards (selection)

On December 18, 2017, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that Clint Mansell's work was on a shortlist from which the nominations in the category Best Film Music will be made at the 2018 Academy Awards . Below is a selection of nominations and awards from other film awards.

Pierre Niney , Dorota Kobiela and their husband Hugh Welchman at a preview of the film

Annie Awards 2018

  • Nomination in the Best Animated Feature-Independent category
  • Nomination in the category Music in an Animated Feature Production (Clint Mansell)
  • Nomination in the category Writing in an Animated Feature Production ( Dorota Kobiela , Hugh Welchman and Jacek Dehnel )
  • Nomination in the Editorial in an Animated Feature Production category

Art Directors Guild Awards 2018

  • Nomination for the Excellence in Production Design Award in the Animated Film category ( Matthew Button )

British Academy Film Awards 2018

Critics' Choice Movie Awards 2018

European Film Award 2017

  • Award for best animated film

Festival d'Animation Annecy 2017

  • Awarded the audience award (Dorota Kobiela)

Golden Globe Awards 2018

Golden Trailer Awards 2017

  • Award for the best trailer of a foreign animation film
  • Award in the category Best Foreign Graphics in a Trailer

Hollywood Music in Media Awards 2017

  • Nomination in the category Original Score: Animated Film (Clint Mansell)

Shanghai International Film Festival 2017

  • Award for best animated film with the Golden Goblet (Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman)

National Board of Review Awards 2017

  • Inclusion in the top 10 independent movies

Academy Awards 2018

Polish Film Festival Gdynia 2017

  • Nomination for Best Film for the Golden Lion (Dorota Kobiela)

Satellite Awards 2017

  • Nomination for best animated film

synchronization

The synchronization took place at Hermes Synchron GmbH in Potsdam based on a dialog book and directed by Heinz Freitag .

role actor Voice actor
Vincent van Gogh Robert Gulaczyk Alexander Doering
Armand Roulin Douglas Booth Jacob Weigert
Joseph Roulin Chris O'Dowd Uli Krohm
Pere Tanguy John Sessions Kaspar Eichel
Louise Chevalier Helen McCrory Arianne Borbach
Adeline Ravoux Eleanor Tomlinson Anna Grisebach
Boatswain Aidan Turner Leonhard Mahlich
Marguerite Gachet Saoirse Ronan Anja Stadlober
Lieutenant Milliet Robin Hodges Viktor Neumann
Gendarme Rigaumon Martin Herdman Jörg Hengstler
Doctor Mazery Bill Thomas Lutz Schnell

Web links

Commons : Loving Vincent  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Loving Vincent . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 171812 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ^ Age rating for Loving Vincent . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c d Loving Vincent In: moviepilot.de. Retrieved October 14, 2017.
  4. ↑ Dutch surnames with van or de (de Jong, van der Vaart, ...) . In: buurtaal . January 5, 2012 ( buurtaal.de [accessed May 27, 2018]).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Van Gogh is alive: Animated film 'Loving Vincent' is coming to cinemas and museums In: presseportal.de, September 29, 2017.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Loving Vincent - a hand-painted film In: vol.at, October 13, 2017.
  7. ↑ a b c Felix Simon: Animated film about van Gogh: Do we want to see his paintings running? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 28, 2016.
  8. ↑ Véronique Barondeau: 'Loving Vincent' - a film painted in the style of van Gogh In: arte.tv, August 19, 2016.
  9. ↑ a b Kerstin Decker: 'Loving Vincent' about van Gogh: The first oil film in cinema history In: Der Tagesspiegel, December 29, 2017.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g h Robert Cashill: Painting on Film: Creating the Canvas of 'Loving Vincent' In: biography.com, September 19, 2017.
  11. ↑ a b c Christina Bylow: 65,000 single images in oil: The animated film 'Loving Vincent' is a miracle In: Berliner Zeitung, December 28, 2017.
  12. ↑ 'Loving Vincent' soundtrack details In: filmmusicreporter.com, August 22, 2017.
  13. ^ Loving Vincent In: filmstarts.de. Retrieved October 14, 2017.
  14. ^ A b Julia Voss: Art film 'Loving Vincent': A life in 65,000 pictures In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 28, 2017.
  15. ↑ Joe McGovern: Eye-boggling Loving Vincent is the world's first fully painted film: EW review In: Entertainment Weekly, September 26, 2017.
  16. ↑ Michael Rosser: Animated 'Loving Vincent' begins shoot In: screendaily.com, April 29, 2015.
  17. ↑ James Mottram: Loving Vincent: How the world's first fully-painted feature film took six years to make In: independent.co.uk, October 12, 2017.
  18. ↑ 'Loving Vincent': Van Gogh's Pictures in Motion In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 14, 2017.
  19. ↑ Loving Vincent In: parentpreviews.com. Retrieved December 23, 2017.
  20. ^ Reason for approval for Loving Vincent In: Voluntary self-control of the film industry. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
  21. ↑ Loving Vincent In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved March 9, 2019.
  22. ↑ Mick LaSalle: 'Loving Vincent' is brilliant and amazing for 10 minutes In: San Francisco Chronicle, October 5, 2017.
  23. ↑ Peter Bradshaw: Loving Vincent review - a dreamlike, hand-painted plunge into Van Gogh Land In: The Guardian October 10, 2017.
  24. ↑ Anthony D'Alessandro: Oscars Qualifies 26 Animation Feature Submissions For 90th Race In: deadline.com, November 10, 2017.
  25. ↑ Loving Vincent In: boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved July 17, 2018.
  26. ↑ https://www.programmkino.de/content/index.php?id=313
  27. ↑ http://www.mediabiz.de/film/news/arthouse-kinocharts-loving-vincent-weiter-auf-der-eins/425602
  28. ↑ Top 100 Germany 2017 In: insidekino.com. Retrieved July 17, 2018.
  29. ↑ Zack Sharf: Oscars 2018: Best Original Score Shortlist Includes 'The Shape of Water', 'All the Money in the World' and More In: indiewire.com, December 18, 2017.
  30. ↑ Terry Flores: 'Coco' Tops 2018 Annie Awards Nominations With 13 In: Variety, December 4, 2017.
  31. ↑ Carolyn Giardina: Art Directors Guild Awards: 'Dunkirk', 'Shape of Water', 'Blade Runner 2049' Among Nominees In: The Hollywood Reporter, January 4, 2018.
  32. ↑ Kristopher Tapley, 'Shape of Water' Leads Critics' Choice Film Nominations In: Variety, December 6, 2017.
  33. ↑ Annecy: 'Lu Over The Wall', 'Loving Vincent' Take Top Honors at Annecy Animation Festival In: Variety, June 17, 2017.
  34. ↑ 8th Hollywood Music in Media Awards Nominations Announced In: filmmusicreporter.com, October 25, 2017.
  35. ↑ Patrick Brzeski: Shanghai Film Festival Awards: 'Pedicab' Wins Best Film, 'Loving Vincent' Takes Animation Honor In: The Hollywood Reporter, June 26, 2017.
  36. ↑ Anthony D'Alessandro: National Board Of Review Winners: 'The Post' Comes Up Strong With Best Pic, Best Actress Meryl Streep, Best Actor Tom Hanks In: deadline.com, November 28, 2017.
  37. ↑ Anna Umięcka: Gdańsko-wrocławski 'Loving Vincent' otwiera Festiwal Filmowy w Gdyni. Wywiad z reżyserką In: gdansk.pl, September 18, 2017.
  38. ↑ Steve Pond: 'Dunkirk', 'The Shape of Water' Lead Satellite Award Nominations In: thewrap.com, November 29, 2017.
  39. ↑ German synchronous index: German synchronous index | Movies | Loving Vincent. Retrieved February 19, 2018 .