Tim’s Vermeer (***1/2)

A warning: this movie may well make you feel like a not-too-bright slacker. Tim Jenison is no slacker and is very smart. At home with seemingly any piece of machinery, he and his company NewTek are responsible for a series of video production innovations that the film breezily runs through. This documentary, directed by the Teller and narrated by his partner-in-magic, Penn Jillette, is pretty breezy in general, so right away we are introduced to its primary thesis. That is, the Dutch master Jan Vermeer used a mechanical device to create his paintings, allowing them to achieve a near-photographic level of realism unlike that of his predecessors or contemporaries.

Like many a magician, Vermeer did not, apparently, leave records behind detailing his tricks. But a few art experts, like David Hockney, thought he had one. Jenison, not an artist, had a hunch what it was. He first shows us the trick, which, to simplify, involves the use of a mirror to project an image in such a way that the painter can, accurately if slowly, copy it onto a canvas. Then, more difficult, he employs it himself. Then, still more difficult, he seeks to re-create Vermeer’s The Music Lesson using materials available to Vermeer in the 1660s,
in rented San Antonio garage.

Unlike Vermeer, who presumably did not actually build the chair or the room seen in his painting, Jenison had to construct both before beginning. Learning Dutch to read old documents was also not an impediment. And that’s before he puts brush to canvas, day after day. This kind of fierce determination is as astonishing as the proposition that someone else might have painted this way 350 years ago. Along the way, Jenison points out features of the painting consistent with that proposition. He’s pretty convincing.

This is an ideal story to tell cinematically; what would have been hard to understand in text is made easily comprehensible with the visual element. In the end, the film leaves us with what I call the Milli Vanilli question. (For the pop-music-history impaired, this musical duo caused an uproar in 1990 when the public learned that they had not performed the music on their records.) That is, should learning how something was (probably) created change your perception of its quality? Jenison, and Penn and Teller, argue against the idea that technology cannot be art; in effect, they say, whatever makes us full of wonder is wonderful.

IMDb link

viewed 3/11/14 7:30 at Ritz Bourse and posted 3/12/14