Van Gogh

I’ve just seen something so astonishing, I hardly have the words to describe how I feel.

I can’t remember which of Vincent’s paintings I saw first. Maybe it was one of the self-portraits—perhaps the blueish one, where his eyes seem to look through you. They always did. Piercing, unresolved.

Whatever the painting, it wasn’t long before I was on a mission to find them all. I didn’t yet know he’d painted nearly 800 works in eight short years. But I knew I couldn’t get enough.

So many favorites. So much motion, so much grief. Brushstrokes filled with fevered joy and sudden loss. I tried to explain it, tried to describe what his work did to me—but the words never seemed to hold.

Then I heard Don McLean’s Vincent. And somehow, he knew. He caught the essence of what I felt, put melody to ache. That song gave me the language I lacked. It still does.

I admired Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life—he gave dignity and fire to Vincent’s story. But it was still the song that felt truest to what Van Gogh meant to me.

And tonight I saw Loving Vincent.

I am in shock.

If you’ve ever been struck by Van Gogh—just struck—please see this film. It’s not just beautiful, it’s orchestral. It moves. It breathes. It stitches his paintings into narrative, but doesn’t try to explain them away. They simply are. And that’s enough.

It feels, in some way, like the paintings have finally come home.

And yes, the film ends with a version of McLean’s Vincent.

It is perfect.