Tim’s Vermeer – a review

An entrepreneur –slash- inventor has stumbled upon a theory that the Golden Age Dutch painters used a photographic technique to make their paintings. Once he told his friend Teller his theory this documentary was made. As we –the audience- journey with this man: Tim as he explores the probable impossibility.

Like everybody I know who Penn and Teller are. Two gifted magicians who are always upfront about the fact that it isn’t ‘magic’ they are performing but a trick. Honest magicians as it were.

So imagine my surprise when these two ‘career fraudsters’ produced and directed a documentary in which they are selling quite a strange concept: that Dutch Golden age painter Johannes Vermeer used photographic techniques to make his paintings.

Just reading the basic premise sent my mind spinning and screaming: “mockumentairy”! I mean, it’s much in the style of Welles’ A for fake in which the director claimed that Picasso didn’t make his paintings (only for him, in the last minutes or so, gleefully acknowledging that he made the whole thing up).

Yet, in Tim’s Vermeer there is no twist ending. The theory posed is brought as real.

But I have my doubts about it. Visually the movie isn’t very convincing that (our hero) Tim actually managed to create the entire painting he set out to do. There are quite a few shots of him, in fact, paining but only short shots. That combined with the elephant in the room of two known tricksters the sense of ‘possible bamboozlement’ stays with you right through the end credits.

It could all be a ‘long con’, with the creators only revealing the truth years into the future.

But it could also not be. That’s the fun part and also the point I’m making. Tim’s Vermeer has willingness to believe stacked against itself. There’s, throughout the movie, an aura of doubt present that I simply could not shake.

But this feeling is exactly the thing that elevated the movie for me. Because this ambiguity made me constantly accept and reject notions posed in the movie. I, as an audience felt like an active part in the movie. But, in the end, I’m still not a 100% convinced that what I saw was real.

But what if it is?

The ambiguity (maybe unwittingly) helped the movie. But this can only happen if a movie is good to begin with. You could throw all the ambiguity in (e.g.) Terminator Salvation but, in the end, it is still a terrible movie.

So let’s, for the sake of argument, accept that what Tim’s Vermeer is telling us is real. That there is an inventor who never painted before in his life who- by means of experimenting with a camera obscura managed to prove his theory that the master painter Johannes Vermeer could’ve used the same technique for his paintings.

To sell such a grand notion the movie does exactly what needs to be done: ease the audience in slowly. After the first bombshell: “I never painted before in my life” the movie takes a step back to let the audience get accustomed to the protagonist Tim.

These scenes are there just to get to know the man. Is the man smart enough? Yes. Is he silly enough? Yes. Is he rich enough? Yes.

With accepting this character/person as the one who could possibly pull it off the whole theory posed becomes plausible.

Then the movie slowly start to show the experiments. An old picture first, then a milk jug. Just to prove that the technique is possible.

After that –by going ‘on the road’- it’s time to bring in the professionals who start off as (the audience) critical but then begin to see the possibility.

Only after a full hour, does the movie spring the big finale on the viewer by having ‘our hero’ (by now) painting a full colour, full size, copy of Vermeer’s Music lesson.

It is a gradual storytelling technique Tim’s Vermeer uses that (much like a magic trick) eases the audience in. By the end of the movie you are more than willing to accept that the camera obscura technique is possible and that Tim is a hero.

In this sense the movie follows three paths: informative, road movie and feel-good. And, like layers of paint these elements complement each other.

You can’t finish this movie without a smile on your face. Maybe it’s all a big magic trick but, basically, you don’t care. What Tim’s Vermeer delivers is an intriguing theory about Golden age painting in the Netherlands combined with a charming hero for the audience to root for.

But I still have my doubts.