All the Vermeers in New York

Rating:
Summary: All style. No substance.
Review: I was extremely disappointed with "All the Vermeers in New York", a mid-80's film from French director/writer Jon Jost which was produced by American Playhouse (in case anyone was wondering, the film IS in English). First of, let me say that I am a big fan of movies dealing with the world of art, and there have been some great ones in recent years; "Pollock", "Maze", "I Shot Andy Warhol", "Sweet Thing", "Vincent & Theo", etc. I am also a big fan of arthouse/independent cinema, and even of films that most viewers would consider to be "slow moving". All that said, I STILL cannot find much to recommend in regards to "Vermeers"! Filmmaker Jon Jost has a photogpaher's eye for visuals and details, and there are plenty of lengthy static shots in this film that indeed look very artistic and "pretty",...but that is part of the problem. The film often seems more like a still-life slide show than a "motion picture", and Jost misses many opportunities to add some needed visual "life" to the film. As a writer and storyteller, I'm afraid Jost leaves a LOT to be desired! While there are three or four central characters, none of them are really devoloped or fleshed-out into people that we care about,...or even understand! Who are these people? What are their motive's? What drives their lives? Why should we spend 90 minutes of OUR lives watching them??? Unfortunately for his viewers, Jost's idea of "character devolopment" seems to be lengthy close-ups of the actor's expressionless faces not saying a word - and as a viewer, I desire a LOT more from a story than this! There is, I believe, a RIGHT way to make a slow-moving film. Take for instance Atom Egoyan's "Exotica"; a film where the story and characters slowly-unravel before your eyes as the writer/director peels back layers of information, and in the end, leaves the audience with a complete picture. The problem with "Vermeers" is that, unlike Egoyan's film, there is no "unvieling" of the story, no suspence, no building up of the characters, and nothing-in-particular driving the plot to an intesting conclusion. I have given the film 2 stars for Jost's considerable visual talents, but it dosen't even get a blip on the screen for it's shoddy storytelling!

Rating:
Summary: The remoteness of art--and some relationships
Review: In the film, "All the Vermeers in New York", stockbroker Mark meets Anna--a French model while they are both gazing at paintings in the Vermeer Room inside the New York Metropolitan Museum. He is immediately struck by her physical similarity to Vermeer's models. They really have nothing in common--apart from a love of Vermeer, and their ephemeral relationship is vague and indecipherable.

There's a lot wrong with this film. The story is pushed aside for overly long camera shots of the museum columns and the floor (amongst other things), and the soundtrack is nothing short of annoying--there are screeching noises and even mini-siren sounds at some points. The film is also self-consciously pretentious at points, and the director's ponderous, introspective style may bother some viewers.

BUT, there's also a lot very, very right with this film. Some of the cinematography is spectacular--how did they make some of the New York scenes look like an Italian landscape? And in one of the scenes, Anna's profile is reflected in a framed painting. For me, however, the saving grace of the film--and why it gets 4 stars--is the story. The lonely stockbroker--who claims that art is his salvation--longs to connect with someone, and unfortunately, when he meets Anna, he thinks she is the embodiment of all he holds dear. His imagination is at once the characteristic that makes him so interesting, but it is also his downfall. Anna is attracted to Mark's money, and she fails to see the person behind the dollar bills. Ultimately they are as remote and indecipherable to each other as the Vermeer paintings created long ago. This is really a very beautiful film--in spite of its flaws--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: The remoteness of art--and some relationships
Review: In the film, "All the Vermeers in New York", stockbroker Mark meets Anna--a French model while they are both gazing at paintings in the Vermeer Room inside the New York Metropolitan Museum. He is immediately struck by her physical similarity to Vermeer's models. They really have nothing in common--apart from a love of Vermeer, and their ephemeral relationship is vague and indecipherable.

There's a lot wrong with this film. The story is pushed aside for overly long camera shots of the museum columns and the floor (amongst other things), and the soundtrack is nothing short of annoying--there are screeching noises and even mini-siren sounds at some points. The film is also self-consciously pretentious at points, and the director's ponderous, introspective style may bother some viewers.

BUT, there's also a lot very, very right with this film. Some of the cinematography is spectacular--how did they make some of the New York scenes look like an Italian landscape? And in one of the scenes, Anna's profile is reflected in a framed painting. For me, however, the saving grace of the film--and why it gets 4 stars--is the story. The lonely stockbroker--who claims that art is his salvation--longs to connect with someone, and unfortunately, when he meets Anna, he thinks she is the embodiment of all he holds dear. His imagination is at once the characteristic that makes him so interesting, but it is also his downfall. Anna is attracted to Mark's money, and she fails to see the person behind the dollar bills. Ultimately they are as remote and indecipherable to each other as the Vermeer paintings created long ago. This is really a very beautiful film--in spite of its flaws--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: Jon Jost's All the Vermeers in New York
Review: Jon Jost shoots a little New York film, and bores the heck out of America.

The central story centers around French actress Anna (Emmanuelle Chaulet) falling for Wall Street money man Mark (Stephen Lack). Their courtship begins in the Vermeer room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Mark passes Anna a note. She meets him later with her roommate Felicity, who pretends to translate for Anna. Mark pursues her until she decides to go back to France, with Felicity, and Mark finally confesses his love in a tragic phone call.

Yawn.

This slow moving film is so boring I took three days to watch the eighty-seven minute thing. The central story takes forever. There are subplots that are brought up and dropped worse than any other film I have ever see. Gordon, the poor artist trying to borrow money from a gallery owner? Dropped. Felicity's dad using her name to make possibly illegal stock transactions? Dropped. Felicity and Anna's constantly rehearsing roommate? Dropped.

The best scenes in the film involve Stephen Lack as Mark. All of his scenes just crackle, and he does some excellent ad-libs. His scene on one of the World Trade Center towers, as he talks about death while a jet plane can be heard over head (this was shot in the early 1990's) is creepy and fascinating. He held back too much in "Scanners," but here he is the only reason to sit through this muck.

"All the Vermeers in New York" is like Woody Allen on his worst day. I wish Jost could have given us more, not bore.

Rating:
Summary: A brave independent film
Review: The presence of Vermeer in the art has always been powerful and many times neglected. His works seem to have a weird enchantment in all the viewers inside and outside the painting craft. The delicate equilibrium in the form and the sumptuous employment of the light and shadow seduce inmediatly the soul, the eye and the spirit. Salvador Dali, for instance, stated in a conference that Vermeer was his favorite painter. And it's interesting to remark how film makers so distant in styles as Greenaway (A zed an two noughts) and Riddley Scott (Blade runner), have shown Vermeers's paintings as admirable narrative devices in their respective scripts, as clever clues.
The premise made by this talented independent director -Jon Jost-is setting in New York (Metropolitan Musseum) a young artist Frenchwoman and a stockbroker who meet in front of a Vermeer painting as a smart raising relationship.
The european style (Wenders, Altman, Losey, Antonioni and Rohmer among the closest authors)developed by Jost, allows explore several issues, such as the mercenary underworld in art dealing, the hipocrisy beneath the surface, and above all the perceptions contrasts about how the art is considered as just another more market object.
Francis Coppola told in 1981 in an interview, this bitter thought: "Ïf anybody thought that the art was just a wrench of market, then you could buy a Picasso, to cut it in two parts and sell both parts as if those of them were two Picassos".
This is a very unusual movie, carefully filmed and cleverly directed.
If you are a Vermeer admirer (as I do) and even you don't , you should not miss this movie. I recommend to read a remarkable essay about Vermeer written by Marcel Brion.