Tim’s Vermeer Review

Posted 10 years ago by myetvmedia

Director: Teller Genre: Documentary
Tim’s Veermeer.

If you take an x-ray of a Vermeer painting, you’ll notice that there are no trial runs. Everything is marked down exactly first time, with no mistakes. That’s a hell of a gift for any artist.

Directed by Teller (of Penn and Teller), Tim’s Vermeer follows the 5 year journey of Tim Jenison to find out how exactly Vermeer was able to get such precision and photo realism. Along the way, he gets poisoned, is invited to a private audience at Buckingham Palace, learns Dutch, destroys a lathe, kicks off a war between art historians and artists, and even learns how to paint.

I’ll admit to not being overly interested initially, but this movie quickly won me over. It’s funny, informative and interesting, masterfully edited and surprisingly fun. I was concerned that Penn and Teller would dominate the movie, but much like Johnny Depp in “No Good Reason”, they are mostly in the background besides one (very funny) scene outside Buckingham Palace and the occasional soundbite from Penn. The focus is on Jenison and his attempt to understand how Vermeer worked, going so far as to build a replica of Vermeer’s workshop in a storage shed.

Highly recommended for artists, art historians, engineers and everyone in-between.

Donal O’Connor

Click here for our guide, Essential TIFF: What To See.

Shown at TIFF13 : Toronto International Film Festival.

Subscribe to
Our Youtube
Subscribe to
our RSS

ETV Newsletter

Get the latest on the media landscape and the minds that create inspiring, paradigm-shifting ideas. Sign up and stay in the loop.

Follow Us
On Twitter
Visit Our
Facebook
View Our
Flickr Stream
View Our
Vimeo Stream
View Us On
Pinterest

Advertise with Us

close