This documentary follows Tim Jenison is a Texas inventor deals with an important problem in all art: Why Dutch master Johannes Vermeer succeed to paint photo before we can invent photography. His research project brings extraordinary results.
What it turns out to actually be about is Tim Jenison, and what it means to be a member of the new (techno) rich in the United States of the 21st Century.
But the doc is worth a look for Jenison himself-a calm, engaging presence whose success you root for-and for its back half, which shows the process he goes through to recreate the setting of Vermeer's The Music Lesson.
We should never forget that Penn and Teller are professional bamboozlers, and their attempt to re-frame the definition of genius might be nothing but smoke and mirrors.
The lengths to which Jenison goes to ensure he is working with the same tools, limitations and liberties that were available to Vermeer are nothing short of gobsmacking.
Perhaps the ultimate take-away from Tim's Vermeer is the unquenchable curiosity of certain people, albeit those with the money to finance that inquisitiveness, to get to the bottom of history's mysteries. In that respect, Jenison is an artist.
