Film: Tim's Vermeer

Ah, the unpredictability of not having something booked! So I was back to films again, and Tim's Vermeer has been top of my list all week (having seen the higher-rated ones). Actually, checking my list, I saw that The Square is now at the same rating. It's about Egyptian revolutionaries, and honestly, I'd have rather seen that, but by this time it was too late to make it to this week's only showing. So, Tim's Vermeer it was, by a convoluted route!

It's only showing at the Odeon Panton Street. A wet and miserable day (again), and the traffic lights still out where I have to cross the road. And, as usual, when I got to Piccadilly Circus, I couldn't remember which exit (4) to take for Haymarket. Still, I was in plenty of time, and I see the weather didn't bother everyone..

I am so glad I ended up going to this film! Really, you don't have to be an art expert to enjoy this. I know what I like, but I was not expecting to enjoy this film as much! The plot goes thusly: the Tim of the title is a software designer with an interest in graphics, who has his own company, pots of money, and the time to devote to projects like this. He has always had a fascination with Vermeer, and how he incorporated light into his paintings. Then he got a present of a book about a theory about how Vermeer managed it, using lenses. And he was off and running!

Essentially, the technique he settled on, after some experimentation, involves the use of a lens, such as in a camera obscura, to project an image onto the wall. He then uses a mirror on the wall (curved, to increase the area he sees), to focus the projected image, and a second mirror to paint with. This is the innovative bit - it's just a small, plain mirror, on a stand, that can be positioned over the canvas and reflects what he sees in the mirror on the wall - simultaneously inverting the image, which has been turned upside-down by the lens, so that it's now right-side up again. And then he paints exactly what he sees in the plain mirror. He can see the reflection of different parts of the image just by moving his head, and the genius of this method is that it allows him to get the colours exactly right - he just compares the colours on the canvas to the colours he's seeing in the mirror. As he says, "When the edge of the mirror disappears," (and it all looks like a continuous image), "you know you have the colours right!"

Does that all sound very theoretical? That's not what the film is like at all. It's highly entertaining, it's hilarious, and, best of all, Tim sets himself to prove his theory that Vermeer himself did something like this - by reproducing one of his works. And what's more, he chooses The Music Lesson. As someone behind me remarked, he could have chosen an easier one..! (Tons of detail.)

The painting was nearly the least of it. He also had to build a room that was a replica of the one in the painting, with the same furniture - and, as he pointed out, this was in a museum in Delft, but they were hardly going to loan it to him! So he, eh, built his own. Including his own windows, with the kind of glass they would have had then. And he mixed his own paints, as they would have done then. And it took him months just to paint.. and, as a painter that he consulted remarked, he did a better job than Vermeer! (Despite having no painting experience.)

Really, give this film a look if you have the chance. It's gorgeous! And as someone behind me remarked to her companion, "Which are you gonna paint?"

Tomorrow I trek to Hampstead, for Rapture, Blister, Burn.. hope the weather improves!