by Staś
Kmieć
reprinted from the November 2017 issue of The Polish American Journal
 |
| Actor Robert Gulaczyk is Vincent van Gogh |
It took seven years and 65,000 hand-painted frames to turn a live action feature into a one-of-kind animated film about the last days of Vincent Van Gogh. Loving Vincent is the first fully oil-painted feature film.
Co-director Dorota Kobiela, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in
Warsaw, was a painter working in animation and
frustrated by a career that revolved around working on other people’s projects.
Determined to make something of her own, she set out to combine her passion for
painting and film. As a university student, she studied the intersection of
psychology and art, writing her thesis on the letters of van Gogh. Using this
as a starting point, she came up with an idea for a seven-minute short film
about the last day of van Gogh’s life.
She intended to paint the entire film herself; however once she
expanded the project into a feature film, the task of writing and directing was
such that she had to incorporate 95 painters from throughout Europe to complete
the project..
One line from van Gogh’s letter –
“We cannot speak other than by our paintings” – became the guiding principal of
Loving Vincent. “I took it literally,” said Kobiela.. “I
thought, ‘This is so amazing if I could actually do exactly that and make his
paintings speak and tell his story.'”
The directors would use 94 of the
artist’s paintings as the film’s settings, while also bringing to life the
painting’s real-life subjects – friends and acquaintances of the artist – to
piece together the mystery of van Gogh’s last days before his tragic death.
For two weeks, the 95-minute
feature was shot with the cast – including notable actors like Saoirse Ronan
and Chris O’Dowd and Polish actor Robert Gulaczyk – largely against green
screens. Another two weeks were spent in Poland shooting backdrops and working
with body doubles to gather the rest of the footage needed.
The directors composited the live-action footage with van Gogh’s paintings,
and used computer-generated animation to give the still-life backdrop a
three-dimensional realism. Once they had a final cut, painting began. For most of the film, the directors wanted
actual hand-brushed strokes that captured van Gogh’s style. Computer animation
would be unacceptable.
Loving Vincent. was released in U.S. theaters on September 22 – capturing the
world of van Gogh in a cinematic experience like no other.
Official Trailer:
