Some people will see this film based on their interest in Vermeer, some will see it because they are fans of Penn and Teller (who present and direct respectively). But the best reason to see this is the eponymous Tim Jenison.
Jenison is an inventor, an engineer, an entrepreneur, a visionary. He is also delightfully and hilariously bonkers. His longtime friend Penn Jillette introduces Tim early on in the film, accompanied by archive footage of Jenison whizzing round a car park on roller skates with a sort of industrial fan attached to his back. Wacky as he may appear, Jenison is also the founder of the highly successful company NewTek which is presumably why he now has the freedom to single-mindedly focus on the art of Johannes Vermeer.
Dutch Master Vermeer is something of an enigma. There are no written documents to record his methods, x-rays of his paintings reveal none of the usual preliminary sketches and he used certain effects which would be almost impossible to detect without the aid of optical devices. Artist David Hockney and academic Philip Steadman, both of whom appear in this documentary, have already postulated that Vermeer must have used Seventeenth Century technology to create his masterpieces.
When Jenison discovers a simple device that could allowed Vermeer to accurately reproduce an image, he decides to test it by copying The Music Lesson. Not content to merely duplicate Vermeer’s work, Jenison learns to speak Dutch, makes his own glass lenses, turns wood, builds furniture, glazes windows, all in his quest to build – and paint – a perfect replica of Vermeer’s scene.
As well as an engaging character study of a mad genius and his obsessive pursuit of perfection, Tim’s Vermeer is also a fascinating exploration of the relationship between art and technology, two fields which are often seen as disparate. It also raises serious questions about authenticity, a commodity so highly prized and yet entirely open to interpretation.