Review of Tim's Vermeer (2013) by Devin M — 12 Oct 2014

Intriguing but a bit too drawn-out documentary that presents and tests an amazing theory about how Vermeer used simple optical instruments to produce his great works of art by attempting to reproduce a famous Vermeer painting using these methods.

The central idea of this movie is a very interesting one: present the surprising theory that Vermeer simply copied images produced by an ingenious optical setup of lenses and mirrors, present some evidence for this theory, and then have novice painter try to replicate a Vermeer. I found the theory and the evidence to be very interesting, and I thought it was remarkable how well paintings could be produced in this manner. The problem with the movie was that after I had learned the main ideas of the process and understood what was going on, the movie was only halfway over. The majority of this movie is devoted to the logistics and nitty-gritty details of reproducing the Vermeer painting. I felt like too much attention was devoted to this project, and I found myself getting bored just waiting to see the final product. Having the audience watch all of these little details was unnecessary and didn't add anything to the film besides thoroughly convincing the audience that if Vermeer did in fact use these methods, he was a very, very patient man.

While I felt that they did present some fairly convincing evidence that Vermeer used some sort of optical setup, a few things about the actual experimental setup to replicate the Vermeer painting were a bit bothersome. My primary complaint is that in order to show that Vermeer used optics, they found a Vermeer painting to copy, painstakingly recreated the setting in excruciatingly precise detail, diligently studied the painting itself, adjusted their optical setup so that they could make it look like the original, and then they were surprised when it came out looking just like a Vermeer! And while the final product is amazing, and it clearly provides some additional credence to the argument, to me, it was not so surprising that it worked out so well, The real art in a work of art is the creativity that went into conceiving and actualizing it. Once it's painted, it's not nearly as difficult to simply copy it. What makes a Vermeer is not simply his style of brush strokes and technique; it's also the composition of the painting itself, which they simply copied for this experiment.

I felt that this movie had a great concept, and I learned some very interesting things about Vermeer and artistic techniques, but I felt that it fell short in its execution by focusing too much on boring details and thus drawing itself out a bit too long.