All the Vermeers in New York

This got good just at the moment when I nearly quit. The opening is, I'm pretty sure, objectively bad: bad dialogue badly delivered in badly framed shots. It's also almost totally irrelevant to the rest of the movie and could probably have been binned. It was weird to go through that and then suddenly, just when I was about to switch off, find myself basically transfixed.

The rest isn't perfect, especially the end, but my god I love it, and there's really nothing else like it. It looks gorgeous, partly for the simple framing - owing something to Vermeer - and the butterscotch dominated colour scheme, but also the very prominent film grain, probably a result of the stock being pushed to keep lighting as simple as possible.

Though none of this is really quite it, at times it feels a bit like Rohmer and at times like something darker, like Mamet or Neil LaBute, but the point is probably that it sits somewhere in between and that's what creates the ache: the characters could be the vacillating lovers of one of Rohmer's bitter-sweet stories, but it all gets messed up and fully soured by capitalist alienation, in particular the alienation of sex becoming transactional.

The other thing its got that isn't in those other things is occasional subtle oddness in the generally paired-down realist visuals, something almost Magritte-ish.

This movie is as subtle as good champagne, as illuminating as a nova star and as poisonous as curare. The "it of it" is easily missed if you are poorly educated and/or badly informed. This is French existentialism on a collision course with capitalism-fueled post industrial deconstructionism. The parallels between the machinations and lies of Wall Street's deals and the morally derelict art world of galleries and art dealers is poignant. Also poignant are the excerpts in French which counterpoint a decadent civilization based on a materialistic narcissism out of control. The whole thing comes to a screeching pitch when the things in life that most people believe are really worth living and dying for (money, honor,love, God) become nothing but a series of meaningless mirages. In the end there is not even God to help us make sense of the dissolute lives we lead. The beautiful Ana, in spite of herself, becomes an exterminating angel for the man who thinks is in love with her. But even she has to run away from New York to save herself and her dreams. In the end the only thing worth holding on to is all the Vermeer's in New York. And remember, no one really knows who Vermeer was. Only his magical light remains on the canvas. - Also contains an unforgettable scene atop one of the now defunct Twin Towers. Sort of creepy foreshadowing of history.

If you are a fan of independent and innovative filmmaking, this movie is for you. It's visuals are tremendous in their composition, movement, colors, etc. It's sense of editing and story progression is involving and thought provoking. This is the kind of movie that makes you forget traditional narrative expectations of "what will happen next?" or questions like "what is going on?" and instead prompts you to just experience, perceive, and feel the film. A must-see for anyone interested in non-traditional filmmaking and for anyone interested in a beautiful movie.

In this review I reveal why the movie is entitled "All The Vermeers In New York". I don't think knowing this spoils the film, though.

People's expectations of a film reflect a lot about them. A lot of people expect to be moved watching a film when the music swells. They expect to get excited when the shots are cut faster. This film allows you to get excited or moved about what's going on because of what is happening to the _people_, not the camera or the music. Films that cut the "crap" of "high-quality" production values and concentrate on character and story show how our ordinary lives achieve a cool, plausable if brief potentiality for soaring.

This film works on this premise, and that's why I love it. It's really a fairly wrenching story that gets told by the people, not as much by the camera and soundtrack (although the shooting and music are brilliantly understated). I identified very closely with the high-powered New York currency trader who couldn't live with himself unless he could come to the museum to gaze at the Vermeer portraits. It allows him to cross the threshold of his own limited life staring at a stock-ticker into a world of pure love, desire and ultimately, hope.

To Jost, nothing seems ordinary, unalive. He is the Van Gogh of film makers. If he made a film about pebbles in the gutter, it would be worth watching.

I saw this some time ago, but I remember liking it. Set in New York amidst both the art and high finance world (a Vermeer painting has a role in the plot), it's slow and deliberately paced, but if you enter its rhythms, it's a very worthwhile movie