TxMike I found the DVD of this documentary sitting on the shelf of my local public library, just gathering dust. The brief description sounded very interesting so I brought it home and watched it. I recall maybe 30+ years ago visiting the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art, and seeing highly detailed old paintings and marveling at the artwork. Some may have been Vermeer, I don't recall.The subject is the 17th century Dutch painter Vermeer. His works are known for their realistic, almost "photographic" qualities. But photography as we know it had not been invented yet. But the camera obscura was well know.This caught the attention of inventor and wealthy Tim Jenison who had founded a company dealing in such things as video, broadcast graphics, special effects, and those sorts of things. He became interested in this subject and pursued it for several years. He first tried using a camera obscura directly but it didn't work well.Not a painter himself, Jenison even went to Holland to see, study, and measure the room Vermeer had used for many of his paintings. Then back in San Antonio carefully built a replica in a warehouse. He devised a way to use optics and mirrors to allow him to see a scene and paint it on canvas. The documentary is not too long, under 90 minutes, and is pretty fascinating. There will never be any proof, there are no old accounts or letters relating to the technique Vermeer, but they make a very strong case for Vermeer having used some sort of technique like this, with lenses and mirrors, to create his highly accurate paintings with a photographic look, not only the images but also the lighting and shadings. It seems Vermeer was an early photographer, instead of film or digital imaging he captured detailed images with paint.

joshsmama I'm amazed at the number of words people are using to review this documentary. As someone who has never had any interest in art or paintings but who enjoys a good mystery, this documentary fascinated me. Whether you hate Penn Jillette or are aren't the least bit interested in who "backed" the funding for making the film, you won't be disappointed in the back stories and the personal commitment and the passion that Tim Jenison has. He's normal and funny and relatable. I applaud his dedication to finding answers to the questions in his own mind. I think he learned a lot during this experience and I learned a lot from him. Great movie. That is all.

rzajac This flick is a treasure box of commentary. It's about the nexus of tech and art; the power of intuition; the validation of genius-as-perseverance; a slow-burn reminder of the value of doing over fantasizing; of materiality as a virtue, which winds up being a sort of metaphor for the Tao, you could suppose; and it's a thought-provoking juxtaposition of the trackable immediacy of our time against the frustratingly ephemeral nature of history.And there's so much more. This story of a man's obsessive pursuit of a provisional truth of art history explodes into ponderings on the nature of modern American commerce--and not without a nod to class.And there's even more! The film, itself, also so-happens to achieve a grail of documentary; it puts you there, and makes you feel like you're sharing the excitement, the wearying obsessions over detail, the running revulsion over the sense that, at any moment, this massive effort could hit any of a number of cul-de-sacs, producing an awesomely bizarre kind of abject failure.I hope this gets across to you that _Tim's Vermeer_ isn't an ordinary documentary. For one thing, the subject matter--a man's ardent, hands-on pursuit of a provisional artistic truth--gets tracked in real time, albeit artfully boiled down to a 70-odd minute exposition. And that, in itself, is a bit of a wonder; that a 70+ minute presentation has you sweating bullets over a man's determination to forge a painting, and discover something beyond painting in the process.It's definitely worth watching.

Sergeant_Tibbs Penn & Teller are most well-known for their entertaining and often edgy magic act. While Teller's documentary Tim's Vermeer is unrelated to his own work, though Penn and himself are active participants in the project, it does have a type of magic involved. The film follows wealthy inventor Tim Jenison's attempts to re-create a painting by Johannes Vermeer using methods that he theorises that Vermeer most likely used. Jenison is no painter, but he has a mechanical mind. To many, Vermeer represents when art started to become more realistic and three dimensional, almost like a photograph. While some art historians believe that he used optics such as a camera obscura to project an image onto a canvas, others implore that it was from sheer talent. It's a hot debate in the art world and one that Jenison is deeply involved in outside of his primary interests and business in contemporary computers, cameras and television. The film thus studies the relationship between art and technology and how creative expression can be manufactured by machines, though it can be argued that through Jenison's obsessive attempts to re-create a Vermeer he in turn learns the skills in order to do it, rather than prove his theory of being able to re-do it in a clinical objective way. Jenison is a fun figure to watch, he's thoughtful and practical with a sense of humour about his preoccupation. He's kind of like a mix between Dan Harmon and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sometimes the mission does seem quite frivolous when this time and money could be put into more productive and urgent matters but it does somewhat justify itself. However, while it has all the ingredients for a great doc, Teller's direction just can't keep up. It suffers from choppy editing, a really rough production and a lack of structure. Perhaps a finer editor would have improved it significantly, but Teller's work makes it a much cheaper picture. Still very much worth the watch.7/10