Tim's Vermeer

Dir. Penn Jillette and Teller Tim's Vermeer documents inventor Tim Jenison's obsessive attempt to recreate a Vermeer using optics he believes the master may have employed to capture unbelievable lighting and shading effects in his paintings. An untrained and amateur painter, Jenison first demonstrates his technique by painting a photographic portrait, which he accomplishes to an astonishing degree, then applies the same technique to a Vermeer. To achieve this, Jenison uses considerable wealth to recreate a room seen in a Vermeer painting, sparing no expense to decorate and to simulate period lighting. Furniture and windows, carpets and paintings and even mannequins with period-appropriate clothing help capture a Vermeer-like interior. The room itself is amazing but Jenison's work has only begun, as he learns how painstaking details are to render. It is widely known that Vermeer used a camera obscura in his work, but we learn he may have had more optical devices at his disposal. The process is illuminating, not only for Jenison but for the viewer and even renowned artist David Hockney, who is shown the final product. Jenison's project wasn't conceived to demonstrate the ease in painting like Vermeer, but to show the master could have and most likely did use advanced (for the time) optics to capture what the ordinary eye cannot. Even Vermeer's contemporaries were unable to record the hyper-accurate lighting effects achieved in the Delft artist's canvasses. Penn and Teller's film captures the physical and emotional strain of the process and it's enlightening and riveting. We even see Jenison looking at the final product, succumbing to tears in the process; no doubt appreciating the effort necessary to paint like the Master. Penn and Teller's choice for a documentary subject is logical; the inventive sleight of hand involved in Vermeer's works and Jenison's reproduction seem like magic acts. It is fairly certain, as Jenison would agree, that Vermeer was a kind of inventor too; wedding art and technology to create otherworldly masterpieces.