Loving Vincent: The Impossible Dream

This documentary moved me to tears! It documents the seemingly impossibly laborious process of making this innovative animation. I thought there had to be some short cut when making "Loving Vincent", but actually there was not. The filmmakers and the painters achieved a truly historic and remarkable artistic journey. Well done!

Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman's 2017 film 'Loving Vincent' is an absolutely extraordinary masterpiece and instant classic. To read about it, and to watch, is to quickly gain understanding of what a momentous, groundbreaking achievement it was, and it's a viewing experience that's wonderfully spellbinding and rewarding. With that said, this "making of" documentary is genuinely just as worthy, and truly drives home what an astonishing, tremendous, painstaking, laborious challenge the lengthy production was. The amount of detail that went into every facet, the tools and processes that were practically invented on the fly, and the utmost meticulousness of the entirety of the endeavor are beyond easy description. Very honestly, whether one is an ardent cinephile or just a casual viewer, 'The impossible dream' is just as much a must-see as its subject as it gives a vivid, eye-opening look at what goes on behind the scenes in the film industry, and in animation, let alone whenever enterprising filmmakers take a leap of faith and try something new.

From conception, to organization; from devising a system for the work to come, to ensuring consistency in the style; from desperate financing to relentless promotion - nevermind the arduous process of creation: this movie articulates all this and more. It's rather astonishing that Kobiela and Welchman were able to get the project off the ground in the first place, and one readily recognizes the supreme dedication and care that everyone poured into its realization. 'The impossible dream' makes watching 'Loving Vincent' all the more rich and gratifying as the complexity and enormity of the undertaking is cemented in our minds. One could watch the full-length picture without this companion piece, but I rather think it would be a mistake to do so. I can appreciate how "featurettes" like this often get overlooked, and I admit I almost never watch such material even when it's so openly available. But then, maybe Miki Wecel's sneak peek is quite exemplary in that regard as it gives such a deep look into so unique a production. Suffice to say that at only one hour, I think 'The impossible dream' is very much worth checking out in addition to its forebear.

There has been nothing quite like this film's impact, one based on thousands of brush strokes as Van Gogh's life in a French village is recounted by those he painted. Though the film sounds like a gimmick similar to those giant recreations of his paintings people paid to sit in, it is much more a reflection of both the man's style and his art.

There are many excellent biopics about Vincent and a few letter-perfect performances, among those by William Defoe and Kirk Douglas, but no films attempting to get into the minds of those with whom he shared time during his last years in the country--this is animation as I have never seen it, and each stroke altered a little bit with each frame of film gives the characters an electric charge, almost as if they were unknowingly inhabited for a while by the spirit of the Father of Modern Art.

So many of the portraits that most of us are familiar with come to life in movement similar to that we experience when viewing an authentic Van Gogh in a museum, and if the viewer has not had that experience, this might be the next best thing. It is a remarkable achievement, an entertaining mystery combined with some serious reflection on the last days of a landmark artist.

Every frame is like a Van Gogh painting...So much better than a film would have been. Like meeting the people in those paintings and seeing them through Vincent's eyes. I've seen it six times and will watch it again in the future. An amazing feat.