An obsessive portrait of one man's obsession with another man's obsession. Magician duo Penn and Teller's documentary is like the relief they'd never permit themselves in their own field of work: it reveals the method behind the magic. Indeed, it goes further, exposing the fact that the truth behind artistic genius is often less god-given gifts, more hard graft. Teller's film plays like a thriller, small-scale but with enormous ambition. With humour but never without respect, Teller depicts this most faithful and remarkable of fine art recreations as a thriller, on which his canvas literally is canvas. Extreme close-ups of the most minute details carry immense weight, the suspense generated through our understanding of the magnitude of the task, and the precision with which inventor Tim Jenison has approached it, an attention to detail that is wholly admirable (from the perspective of someone equally given to seemingly trivial obsessions) and that has consumed his life for the last five years. What Jenison is attempting, to paint his own Vermeer using technology which he posits the Dutch master may himself have used, is a mammoth undertaking, but one of great intimacy - one man, one room, one small piece of canvas. Teller knows of humanity's ability to experience levity during moments of tension from his day job; he employs gentle comedy here to accent the tension he has built, understanding that we are more susceptible to it when most on edge, but not bombarding us with it and thereby dissipating that tension altogether. A luscious score from Conrad Pope aids Teller in the manipulation of our nerves, with its gorgeous noirish orchestral arrangements.
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