Fighting invisible monsters

[shewhomust]

If you want to know why Van Gogh painted a monster at the window of the church at Auvers, why would you go to Arles (location of that café terrace) in the south of France, which he had already left when he painted the church, which is in the north?

This bothered me. I know that in the scale of things Whovian, it's a minor inconsistency, but it bothered me in a way that other things didn't. The Doctor decides to indulge Amy, who is a big Van Gogh fan by taking her not to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam (which has the largest collection of his work) but to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: well, they have some fine examples too, and besides, Paris! The monster turns out not to be savage and brutal as originally described by the Doctor but lost and lonely and blind, and was only massacring random people on the streets because it couldn't see them - well, which of us hasn't done that at some point?

At one level, this installment lost me as soon as it wheeled on Bill Nighy as a passing art expert - oh, don't get me wrong, he was wonderful, and I enjoyed the business with the bow ties. But thinking "Good grief, that's Bill Nighy" does rather throw you out of the story. Nor did I believe the 'Greatest. Artist. Evah.' judgement he was doling out. We all love our Vincent, but the assessment of his position (as gathered from a quick trawl through Google) is closer to 'greatest Dutch painter since Rembrandt' and 'one of the greatest Post-Impressionists'. Isn't that good enough? Does he have to win the Greatest Artist competition, too?

It was fun. But I'm still waiting for the Doctor to stop messing about and fix the crack in the universe.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It threw me too when I googled that church and found it was at Auvers, not Arles. I suppose it's in the tradition of Who to telescope Vincent's career like this, but still, it rankles.

And again, why- if they could afford to film at the Musee d'Orsay- couldn't they have driven out into the Paris suburbs and grabbed some exteriors of Vincent's church as well- instead of filming in some Welsh churchyard which looked entirely wrong?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I continue to be amused by the way Wales has become the new centre of the universe, so that didn't bother me, though it could have.

Aha! I wasn't convinced by the Musée d'Orsay interior, and SFX (http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/06/05/vincent-the-doctor/) confirms this: the interiors, at least, are the National Museum Of Wales.

I think what rankles about this telescoping (good word for it - thank you) of Vincent's life is that it reduces a complex person to a stack of greatest hits. Because, after all, if you really did have a TARDIS (especially one which it seems you have now learned to steer), it would be tempting to visit your heroes. Vincent and the Doctor pretends it's going to do that, but then decides that we'll be bored unless it throws in a monster, and some paintings he hasn't done yet, and defers some paintings he has already done so that Amy can inspire them (and how lucky that the sunflower painting Vincent chose to inscribe to her was the one in Paris - wait, there's one in Paris? It looks a bit like the one from the National Gallery - or perhaps he inscribed them all...).

It was a fun episode, but it doesn't bear thinking about seriously.