[Julie Steiner]

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Ann and Jim.

Jim, I think Zhao's naïveté and his evangelical fervor about becoming a true artist are exactly what keep him from accepting the impossibility of bridging the gap between Van Gogh and himself.

Not that Van Gogh was a model of level-headedness about his own prospects of an artistic career, either.

Annie, I saw Zhao's cheerful son as an incarnation of his own childlike wonder.

I do find it touching that this man who had longed for education as a child—he weeps again when talking about having to enter the world of work after only one year of middle school—has stubbornly refused to stop trying to get the education of his choice, somehow. And he has tried hard to provide educational opportunities to his children—although his daughter's soul is clearly being crushed by her educational opportunities, poor thing. Again, there's a seemingly-insurmountable gap between where she is and where she needs to be in order to be successful.

Lots of weeping in this film. One of the Dutch comments in the YouTube thread translates to, "The paint dries, the tears never."

The juxtaposition of the spreading tendrils of cigarette smoke in the film projector's light and Van Gogh's "Almond Blossoms" was a bit heavy-handed, but I couldn't help liking it anyway.

Apparently there are other versions of this documentary, one of which shows several minutes of (spoiler alert, highlight this text if you want to read it): Zhao's museum visit to encounter the originals he's been reproducing for twenty years. I haven't tracked down that footage to see why what might otherwise be considered one of the climaxes of the film was cut from this version.

Another spoiler:
I thought Zhao's Van Gogh-influenced composition of the alleyway in his hometown worked very well. The paintings of Zhao's studio and of his grandmother were disappointingly mediocre, but considering that these are among his first attempts at his own original works, that shouldn't be surprising. And the discussion with his wife about the painting of his studio was charming. That one made me think of Grandma Moses's work.