Surrounded
by thousands of reproductions on the walls of student bedrooms, cafes and
hospital corridors, it’s easy to lose sight of what Vincent Van Gogh’s
paintings actually look like: the brushwork, the paint, the expressiveness. Nor
quite how many paintings he actually produced – more than 860 in just nine
years – beyond the well-known sunflowers, wheatfields, cafes and woolly-necked
self-portraits.
The very
idea of painting an entire feature film, frame-by-oily-frame, makes the palms
sweat. But the result is bewitching: part exhibition, part whodunnit, with a
cast that includes Douglas Booth, Helen McCrory, Chris O’Dowd, Saoirse Ronan
and Aidan Turner.
It’s an
animation imagining the last months of Vincent van Gogh’s life, and
specifically (but inconclusively) investigating the theory first aired in the
2011 biography by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White, that he did not shoot
himself but was actually shot as a bizarre prank by a local bully
Directors
Hugh Welchman and Dorota Kobiela have created live-action footage with actors
playing scripted roles and then digital software appears to have been used to
facilitate the over-painting. “It’s all painted with Royal Talens paint brand
called Van Gogh,” says Welchman.
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