This is the best short film I've seen at the Putnam Museum/IMAX Theatre.

It's not fair to compare it with the likes of "The Polar Express." Movies such as that were created as feature films. I'm talking here about a documentary: "Van Gogh: Brush With Genius," which has extraordinary depth and gorgeous visuals.

Not to belittle documentaries that use such enhancements, but Van Gogh doesn't need rock music or 3-D to hold viewers of his works spellbound.

Full disclosure here: I have purchased only a handful of "art prints" in my life. One of them happens to be "Starry Night," a painting I love so much that my computer screen-saver is a Lexus parody of it. I was so astounded to see Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" at the National Gallery that it seemed as though time stood still while I looked at it.

But you need not be a Van Gogh aficionado to become a fan of this film. Its delivery is delightful: French actor Jacques Gamblin serves as the voice of the great artist, who watches as a museum researcher ("Women find me a lot more interesting since I died," he says) painstakingly translates his letters, even going so far as to try to read what he has crossed out on the back of a sketch.

When one of his paintings sells for $82 million, Van Gogh says, "Not bad" for someone who sold only one painting while he was alive.

To see Van Gogh's works up close and magnified is to see the richness of his thick brushstrokes and the incredible colors in his night skies and still lifes. Sometimes the director hones in so closely that you can't see the painting. Instead, you look at a series of brushstrokes so vivid that they are mesmerizing in themselves.

Also, we see the actual countryside and the paintings depicting it in lovely scenes from Arles, Paris and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Although the film is brief, it manages to give us a timeline of the tormented Van Gogh's life as an artist, including his year in an asylum and his eventual self-inflicted death.

Never does the movie give us a glimpse of "Starry Night" or "Sunflowers." Rather, the director wisely focuses on other images - many of which I'd never seen and some of which you may not have seen, either.

Armond Amar's score, so pretty that it's sold on amazon.com, adds to the contemplative, quiet mood of this movie.

And how did I end my evening right after I saw this film? I went to youtube.com to hear Don McLean singing "Vincent," his classic musical tribute to the artist, and see a few more of Van Gogh's works.