BEFORE: I've finally decided to cross some documentaries off my list - with my actor linking coming to an end, I could have just started a new chain, but I noticed that the last film in the chain was about art, and I also had some documentaries on that subject, so it seemed like a natural fit. So I'm suspending linking for a little over a week and I'm lumping all of the documentaries together. And the last doc in the chain will be on a particular subject matter, which will link thematically to a particular narrative film, and then I'm back on track.
However, at that point, I'll have just under 80 viewing slots left for the year - I've got a chain planned that I think will take me all the way to Movie #2,200 (Star Wars: Episode VII) but then the question becomes - is it the BEST chain? There will be another linking break just before the Halloween films, can that be avoided if I change the list around? Have there been new films added to the end of the list that link better to films now at the top of the list? Are there films scheduled for 2015 that should be moved to 2016, either to create a better romance chain in February, or perhaps if I don't have enough romance films, to create a Black History chain? I've got a couple films scheduled for 2015 about musicians, and some more on that topic for 2016, should they be moved together? These are the things that keep me up nights.
Well, I've got a week to play around with the chain, the good news is, if I can't find a better order in that time, I'll just go with what I've got now, it's like a safety net. No matter which 87 films I watch in the rest of 2015, I'll never be able to predict if the films I leave for next year can be organized into a coherent chain or not, because the list is always changing, films are always being added, so it's like trying to corral a herd of cats. The good news is that my watchlist is now down to 140 films - so that's 87 for this year and 53 for next year, though I'm sure that latter number will increase.
Anyway, about documentaries. I'm not opposed to the form, it just seems like Hollywood's got an overwhelming bias toward big-budget narratives, and so that's mostly what I end up watching. I won't say I've completely avoided them, since I've watched films like "Wordplay", "The King of Kong", "What Would Jesus Buy", "Religulous", "Knuckleball", "Freakonomics" and a few others. But 18 films out of 2,112 is still very small, less than 1 percent. I finally got to "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" about two years ago.
I caught a couple of documentaries in the past year that I didn't even count - when I was sick a few months ago I watched most of that documentary about Billie Jean King, and I also felt compelled to check out most of that documentary about Scientology that was making the rounds. I also watched "The Jinx", that docu series about Robert Durst, but since that was a cable series and not a stand-alone film, I didn't think it should count. So I think it's long overdue that I get into some of these - I'm sure there are more than I can get to in a week's time, so maybe I'll have to do a follow-up week next year.
THE PLOT: Inventor Tim Jenison seeks to understand the painting techniques used by Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer.
AFTER: Tim Jenison is not a painter, that's a point that this film makes, again and again - but he did stumble upon an idea that gave him access to a painting technique that allowed him, with the use of a mirror, to reproduce a technique that Vermeer MIGHT have used to make his very lifelike paintings. Maybe when you were a kid you made a crude pinhole camera with a shoebox, if you can imagine that shoebox large enough for an artist to stand in, that's a "camera obscura". The theory would be that an artist could take advantage of the beams of light coming through a small hole into a dark room, which would project an image from outside that room on to one of its walls, albeit backwards and upside-down.
Now, it just so happens that Vermeer's painting career coincided with the invention of the telescope, so there's a good chance he was aware of the use of lenses, and with the proper lens, one could use the camera obscura concept to create something akin to a focused image on that dark wall, and it would be almost like watching a movie on a screen in a dark theater (again, only upside-down). By using a shaped lens, one can even invert the image so it's right-side up, and Jenison found that by using a small mirror over a blank canvas, he could position his head in a way that would allow him to match the darkness between the mirror image and the canvas, and making a thousand little miniscule comparative adjustments to the grayscale of the painted image, he could reproduce a black-and-white photo in paints, relatively well.
But it's a large leap in logic to assume that because the results of his experiments worked so well, then Vermeer MUST have used this technique, or something like it, and managed to keep this technique secret from the world at large, especially other artists. I don't know enough about art or artists to say that because Vermeer's work is so detailed, he MUST have been using this technique to reproduce the elements of a scene, as opposed to, say, viewing them or making them up in his brain.
Jenison might be one of the few people in the world with the resources to build an exact replica of Vermeer's studio, and all of the elements within - or to have access to computer technology that can extrapolate the measurements of a room from a painting (we're assuming, here, that Vermeer managed to reproduce the room seen in "The Music Lesson" with no variance or artistic license...) and the ability to generate plans to design and fabricate everything seen within that frame, and have it positioned just so. It must also be nice to be able to take over a year off from work to be able to design that room and paint its image on canvas.
I loved the sequences where you get to see the formation of the painting over time, these were quite artfully done, for lack of a better word. But the daily interviews, and the amount of time spent watching Jenison do very meticulous painting strokes, are really tedious. Jenison's not exactly the most dynamic personality on camera, and after he's spent over 100 days on the painting, it seems like talking about the painting is the last thing he wants to do. He even admits that if they weren't making a film about the process, he would prefer to quit. (Perhaps we can even see a little bit of insight into how painting might have helped to drive Van Gogh mad...) I appreciate the feeling of being involved in a project that's gone on much longer than expected, but that's no reason to pass on the feelings of ennui and frustration to the viewers. Who knows, perhaps when I watch my last movie, I'll break down in tears also.
However, this depiction almost works against the case they're trying to prove - the process of duplicating a Vermeer takes so long, that it starts to feel doubtful that Vermeer would have spent as much time as Jenison on a single painting, when you have to figure that free-styling any small part of it would have been quicker, albeit less accurate. (Vermeer had one advantage, he didn't have to duplicate another person's set-up, he just had to decorate his room, of course...) And the argument for Jenison designing the room in this particular way seems almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you use computer software to measure a room from a painting, and then design a room to those specs, and then paint that room, well of COURSE you're going to get something that looks like Vermeer's painting, no?
But if Jenison's correct, this changes what we think we know about painters - we always think of them like Van Gogh, standing outside in a field somewhere, hoping to capture the essence of a wheat field as it blows, or crows in flight. Before photography came about, painting was the best way to capture a moment, but it could never get things 100% right - unless, of course, some other technology was being used as a sort of cheat. After all, the human eye and the human brain have limitations when it comes to the colors we can see and the amount of detail we can process - but a camera does not, and neither does a projected image.
Look, I love Penn & Teller - I'll watch just about any TV show or movie they're involved with, not counting "Sharknado 3" (what were they thinking?) I worked on a documentary way back in 1991 that they recorded framing sequences for, and was thrilled to meet them. This was when they lived and performed in NYC, before heading out to their long residency in Vegas. (For a while, Penn and I attended some of the same parties, but I doubt he remembers me.)
But I'm going to have to fall back on some of the investigative techniques that they espoused in their cable series "Bullshit!" - just because you want something to be true, it doesn't mean that it is. And as compelling as it seems, the lack of evidence for something can't be taken as evidence, not even as evidence of a cover-up or a kept secret. The lack of evidence is just that - unfortunately, there's no way to 100% confirm that this is how Vermeer worked, but the painting that Tim ended up with certainly makes a compelling argument. I'd hesitate before putting him through that process again, but I'd be curious to see if his technique would help him duplicate the work of any artist, or if there's a particular reason why it would only work with a Vermeer. Unfortunately, this also seemed a lot like it might have been an experiment without any control element.
NITPICK POINT: If I'm going to get very technical here, the film states a couple times that Jenison "painted a Vermeer". Even if Vermeer used this technique, though, and even if Jenison copied the scene exactly, from a language point of view, it's impossible for him to "paint a Vermeer" - only Vermeer can paint a Vermeer. He can only paint a Jenison in the style of Vermeer - hey, don't blame me, blame the shortcomings of language. Art historians could spend hours poring over Tim's painting, and they might even declare that it looks exactly like a Vermeer, but no one, upon learning its true parentage, would then go so far as to call it one.
Also starring Penn Jillette (last seen in "Fantasia 2000"), Teller (ditto), Martin Mull (last seen in "Mrs. Doubtfire"), Philip Steadman, David Hockney.
RATING: 5 out of 10 floor tiles
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