Vincent Movie Review

Fun fact: Vincent Van Gogh loved his brother Theo. They wrote a lot of letters to each other.

If you care what those letters said, this is the movie for you!

Vincent consists entirely of John Hurt narrating from Van Gogh's collected letters, mostly to his brother. On screen we see a collection of random imagery that vaguely relates to the themes in the letters, intercut with a few photos of Van Gogh's most famous works.

A biography of Van Gogh this isn't: It is simply a look into the psyche of the artist from 1872 to 1890 (when he died). Mostly Van Gogh rails against a world that wouldn't buy his paintings (he sold only one in his lifetime, though he created 1,800 works), talks about economizing, idolizes his painter pal Gaugin, discusses his relationships with women (they aren't pretty), and eventually goes nuts while living in the south of France. The only one there for him was Theo.

Documentarian Paul Cox has stumbled upon an effective way to tell the story of a man's life, though it's terribly repetitive to listen to one voice for 90 minutes -- even one as interesting and distinctive as Hurt's. The imagery is nothing special (particularly when it's not focused on a Van Gogh painting). The quality of the film snippets are roughly on par with a well-produced home movie.

If you're really into Van Gogh, you'll get a kick out of this film plus a 55-minute bonus feature on the DVD which is a sort of behind the scenes. Not that there are actually any scenes, per se, but anyway... Here, take my ear. Just take it.

Aka Vincent - The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh.