Loving Vincent

We went to see Loving Vincent last night. If we hadn't gone, there would have been only one person watching it.

The theatre should have been full: this is a wonderful movie about Vincent van Gogh. It's not the greatest movie of all time - the script is a little undercooked. It's probably not even the greatest animated movie of all time, but it has a certain unique quality that sets it apart.

If you don't already know, the movie was shot with live actors in front of a green screen. There are a number of well-known faces in the cast, such as Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Saoirse Ronan, Helen McCrory and Chris O'Dowd. Intriguingly they all speak with British accents rather than French or European ones, so that we hear Irish and Cockney amongst others. This takes a little getting used to, but it works.

Once the live action was shot, paintings by van Gogh were 'composited' into the background and the film was edited as normal. Then each frame was projected onto a blank canvas, and one of some 125  hundred artists painted - in oils - over the projection, using the techniques Van Gogh himself would have used.

The result is a movie rich in colour, with real depth and texture. None of the artists had worked on an animated movie before, so they brought a different sense of colour and animation to the screen.

Initially, the eye is almost overwhelmed with the movement - clouds never stay still, trees continually reform their leaves, even people's hair moves from frame to frame. It's a little disorientating. And it's wonderful seeing so many of Van Gogh's paintings coming to life during the course of the movie.

The story is more straightforward, almost a detective story. Armand Roulin, the son of the postmaster who was a friend of van Gogh (both of them appear in well-known van Gogh portraits), has been charged with delivering a one-year-old letter that Vincent had sent to his brother, Theo. It had gone astray. During the course of trying to get the letter to its rightful home, Armand discovers that things were not entirely as they seemed in relation to Vincent's death. Being impetuous, he often jumps to conclusions, and he's led astray by the variances in the stories people tell him about Vincent's last hours.

The audience is also led astray: one minute feeling that new revelations about Vincent's death have come to light, the next finding that another character contradicts what we've heard. It leaves the viewer with a kind of emotional confusion, and an increasing sadness at the shortness of Vincent's life, and the reasons behind his death.

I found the movie very moving for reasons I couldn't put my finger on. The reason for that doesn't matter. Both my wife and I were overwhelmed with the sheer beauty of it.

Atonement

For some reason I'd heard mixed opinions on Atonement, so wasn't sure what to expect. In terms of performances and film craft (particularly the visual aspects) it's superb. In terms of intensity, the first half is strong, but the second, where it focuses almost entirely for some time on the character of Robbie, seems to lack something. Things pick up again once we're back in London, with the grown-up Briony trying to make amends for her most ill-judged decision back when she was 13, and then there are the final scenes with Vanessa Redgrave playing the elderly Briony, where Redgrave imbues her few minutes of screen time with an intensity that matches the early scenes.

Saoirse Ronan gives an extraordinary performance, the gaucheness matched by the conniving, the stiff body that seems unable to relax, the jealousy that we only understand much later. And Keira Knightley and James McAvoy are solid in their roles. Knightley's role unfortunately diminishes after the first half - she only appears briefly two or three times, and in the war scenes McAvoy is left to play almost to himself; the two accompanying soldiers make little impact. This is the way the screenplay is constructed; I don't know as yet how the book works in this respect (though I'm more tempted to read it after seeing the movie).

Joe Wright seems to be one of those directors who's come out of nowhere. Apart from his recent revamp of Pride and Prejudice, which had some odd moments, (but certainly gave fresh vision to the story) his only work seems to have been in television, and even there, it's been not well-known in general. How did he get to handle Atonement, which obviously has a good deal of money behind it? The lengthy single take on Dunkirk beach is a huge achievement on its own, even though it doesn't add a lot to the story, regrettably. (It competes strongly with the single take in Children of Men.) And it must have used up more than half the film's budget.

About this scene, Wikipedia notes: Charles II: The Power and The Passion, Pride and Prejudice and Atonement all have long tracking shots in them. Atonement has a continuous 4.5 minute shot of the Dunkirk evacuation. "Basically, I just like showing off," Wright told the audience at the Hay Festival. Showing off or not, (or seeing how much he can pack into one shot, like the number of bytes now packed into the average micro sd) the lengthy take is remarkably constructed, and the visual aspects have a painter-like feel about them, something that reflects Wright's art history background.

It would be interesting to re-view the film now that I know how it ends, and know what sort of 'trick' is played on the viewer. I think the acting and visuals would continue to enthrall, and the story might no longer be seen as the main thing. Knowing a great deal more about the characters and where they're headed would actually add to a repeated viewing, rather than take away from it, I think.