Close to Vermeer

With Close to Vermeer, Suzanne Raes makes a picture about an exhibition about pictures as entertaining and informative as seemingly possible.

In her brief yet compelling behind-the-scenes look at the leadership of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam organizing the world’s largest Johannes Vermeer exhibit — which the museum’s website currently informs potential visitors is “definitively sold out” — the director gets her camera in some impressively tight spots, including up close and personal with a microscope and inside a camera obscura.

But it’s her chronicle of the international wheeling and dealing with various museum representatives — some of whom are unwilling or unable to budge, thereby negating a complete show — and wily wild card Thomas S. Kaplan, the lone private collector to own a Vermeer, that nearly match the thrills of the paintings themselves.

Complemented by lovely floating shots inside well-lit galleries, often cued to a subtle but suspenseful woodwind score, the mysterious painter’s life and work are debated and experts disagree on authentication right up to the exhibition’s debut, granting an air of uncertainty to particular pieces.

Through it all, Rijksmuseum curator Gregor Weber is the constant, alert to all the happenings in a room like a cross between a detective and a benevolent shark, as his dream project takes shape one year before his slated retirement. Fellow curator Pieter Roelofs and conservators Abbie Vandivere and Anna Krekeler likewise lend their own distinct personal and professional charms to the proceedings, but the film’s scene stealer is Jonathan Janson, a charismatic painter and Vermeer expert, who pops up to offer welcome advice to Weber and his team without a hint of ego clouding his insights.

Raes blessedly ushers viewers in and out of the experience in under 80 minutes — all that’s needed with these engaging, dedicated individuals and the task at hand. As with Teller’s entertaining 2013 documentary, Tim’s Vermeer, her film offers sharp scholarship on a fascinating topic about which few viewers know much, but which many will feel prompted to independently dig deeper once the credits roll.

Grade: B-plus. Not rated. Now playing at the Fine Arts Theatre and Grail Moviehouse

(Photo: Kino Lorber)