★★★★½: Loving Vincent by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman

 


The Academy is an absolute sham. Imagine the collective love and passion a hundred artists poured into this, spending what must've been tens of thousands of hours hand-painting nearly 70,000 individual canvases only to be nominated alongside Boss Baby and still lose. Serious change needs to happen in the world of film criticism because honestly, this is embarrassing. 

As an artist, this was both an exhilarating and deeply depressing watch. Seeing post-impressionism in motion felt like a sacred sort of magic, like a secret I should not have been told. On the other hand, being faced with the fact that no level of artistic genius can guarantee commercial success or happiness is a frightening thing to go through when you're 17 and haven't even dropped out of art school yet. 

I appreciate that this film gives us multiple retellings of the events, each biased in its own way, and doesn't frame one or the other as being more supremely correct. The end left me a little more than slightly shaken. There is an undefinable amount of love and care poured into this film, not just from a technical aspect but also from a narrative standpoint, in telling the story of a man whose mental illness is so often mischaracterized as glorious or romantic. 

I can admit there were lulls in the plot, and some parts could've been omitted and others emphasized. But my rating remains the same, because it's HANDPAINTED.

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