Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh plastic arts title and documentary about the work and life of Vincent van Gogh.  Eline Timmer directs the main film showing about 100 paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and interviews with art history experts discussing in detail each stage in van Gogh's life and of his development as artist. A bonus feature explains what happened to the paintings van Goth left at his death and why some 200 of the most famous paintings are still in two museums in Holland. Released in 2011, title was shot with digital cameras in "Full HD 1080P" at 30 fps; disc has  5.1 Dolby Digital sound. Grade: A-

When I first stumbled onto this title on Amazon.com I thought, "This must be another one of those van Gogh dramas about paid love and missing body parts." But something told me to buy it anyway. It turned out to be what we have been waiting for for 5 years (since the first fine-art HDVD was published): a serious treatment in high-definition TV of a large number of paintings and drawings with expert curation by art historians. This is a milestone for fine-art HDVD fans, and I found it by accident! Well, it's a milestone for folks who have a good command of either Dutch or English (more later about the language problem with this disc.)

There are 3 segments on this title. The main program lasts 135 minutes and is called Vincent van Gogh Een leven voor de kunst or Vincent van Gogh, A Life for Art. There is an extra that lasts 15 minutes called Van Goghs roem zijn tweede leven or Van Gogh's Fame---His Second Life. Finally, there is a Picture Gallery that displays 14 paintings.

The main program divides van Gogh's life in 5 periods. The full resources of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam are exploited for each period. You see wonderful shots of numerous painting and drawings, historical pictures, excepts from letters, and the like as well as great high-def video showing what the locations and buildings that van Gogh knew look like today.  What you see is explained in voice-over narration and via numerous short interviews with art historians and experts from the Van Gogh Museum. The material is quite detailed and absorbing--- the 2 hours and 14 minutes goes by fast. The main program ends with Vincent's death.

The bonus extra about Vincent's "second life" deals with what happened after Vincent's death. As you probably know, he died young and still almost unknown outside a tiny circle of admirers, mostly other avant guarde artists. Vincent had been supported by his brother, Theo, who inherited the paintings and drawings. But Theo died just a few months after Vincent. There is a famous photo of Jo, Theo's wife, with her baby son in her lap. Jo, and later the boy, worked for decades to keep together the works that are now at the Van Gogh Museum. Still, many paintings were given away or sold over the years. About 100 were collected by Helena Kroller-Muller, and this collection is now in a museum at Otterlo in Holland.

If you speak Dutch or English, this is an excellent title that will give you a fine introduction to van Gogh. But what's the problem with the other languages? The show uses voice-overs to narrate much of the visual material. The voice-overs are provided in Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. But much of the program is also conveyed through interviews with the art experts. These folks speak in Dutch. There is no voice-over for the interviews in other languages. Only English subtitles are given for the interviews (and English subtitles are used only for the interviews). So if Spanish, French, German, or Italian is your only European language, you will probably understand the voice-over narration, but you will not benefit from the interviews. But hang onto your hat! If you can read Chinese or Simplified Chinese, turn on those sub-titles. Then you will have a nice written translation for both the narration and the interviews. What's going on here? Did the publisher assume that anyone who knows German, French, Spanish, or Italian also must know English? Or is there supposed to be a voice-over for the interviews in German, French, Spanish, or Italian which somehow got dropped by mistake in post-production? Or maybe those languages are on the disc as voice-overs for the interviews, but don't play due to a disc manufacturing error? (Is your head spinning?)

This disc sports excellent PQ in 1080p. I do see severe motion artifacts, which I think is called "jutter" on my system when the camera pans any stationary object.  I also get strange motion artifacts with images of any object with a lot of fine parallel lines close together such as a drawing at 03:09 of the main program. My TV display can't maintain the lines correctly and they "shimmer" or jump around extravagantly. I took this disc to my gear guru, John Fort in Dallas. The nice system in his showroom could handle the fine parallel lines without a problem, so the shimmer I get in my home theater is my fault. But John had the same jutter problem I have. We suspect this may come from poor handling of frame rate issues somewhere along the line as this film made its way from the camera to my HT.  The sound is fine; the background music (probably generic stock material) is forgettable, but it does sound nice. 

Now for a grade. This title is informative and well done. It's a shame that the art work on the front of the keep case (and the presentation of this on Amazon.com) gives so little information about the delightful content. It's regrettable that the language issues are so goofy and frustrating. This could have been an "A" or "A+" title; but due to issues mentioned, the best grade I can give is "A-." Still, as long as you are strong in Dutch or  English, or read Chinese well, you should enjoy this title a lot.