All the Vermeers in New York (1992)

An absolute waste of money

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

I want to echo what was said in a few above reviews about the litany of boring visuals that stretch across the length and breadth of this gawdawful movie. What I remember most clearly is that a large portion of the movie shows a view of the back of one or another character's head as that character looks at something, such as the sky from the WTC observation deck or a Vermeer painting in the Met. It's literally the "let's look at the back of someone's head" movie. Who thought that would be interesting?Then, for a climax, a character you couldn't care less about bleeds from his ear in a phone booth. When someone asks me what's the worst movie I ever saw, I often cite this one.

This literary, in many respects experimental film examines the parallels between the art world and the business world, through the relationship between an actress and a stockbroker who meet in the Vermeer Room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.The film is much more interesting for its cinematography and narrative style than its plot. In keeping with its subject matter, the photography tries to emulate Vermeer's paintings, with some shots of Emmanuelle Chaulet being particularly successful. Furthermore, rather than having a linear plot, the narrative takes the form of a mosaic linking the different characters, bringing to mind a minimalist short story.This is not to say the film is for all tastes. Some scenes, such as where Anna and the stockbroker first meet, drag on for too long. Furthermore, some of the dialogue, particularly Stephen Lack's, comes across as overly metaphorical and stilted, though this should not be a surprise given that it was supposedly improvised.On the whole, a film worth seeing for a look at when the art house film scene really was arty, before the indie film boom led to the scene being co-opted by corporations.

The film begins with a static shot of the tops of buildings, turrets and spires, an unnamed city that looks old and European but eventually turns out to be Manhattan. Three young, pretty female roommates in a big apartment, one an aspiring actress, another a singer, the third involved in the art world. There's some cutesy, inconsequential dialogue; we are struck right away with the director's command of image, sound (particularly off-screen) and his exquisitely put together sets. Soon we move to an art gallery setting, a young man in a leather jacket arguing angrily with a dealer who is trying to sell his work -- will he be the protagonist? The film in its first couple of reels doesn't give us any answers here; the man leaves with a wealthy patron and potential buyer, but we don't follow them and move on instead to another a brief scene set in the financial world, as a broker or buyer of some kind (Stephen Lack) alternates between shouting about business and some kind of personal issues on the phone. Close on the heels of this scene, we enter another segment of the art world, as one of the roommates - aspiring French actress and student Anna (Emmanuelle Chaulet) is seen perusing the old masters - chiefly Rembrandt and Vermeer - at what turns out to be the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is in turn perused by our stockbroker, who hands her a note at which point she leaves.This is the scene that introduces the spectacular and fairly indescribable avant-jazz/classical score by Jon English, one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard, and it also seems to introduce the rest of the film as we will now focus on these characters, and on the difficult lives they lead while being surrounded by and comforted by all the great art - photography, painting, music and architecture - that suffuses the film. An awkward scene in which Anna pretends to not speak English and is accompanied by her roommate Felicity (Grace Philips) as pretend-translator meets Mark (Lack) at a restaurant seems distancing and off-putting, and it seems very uncertain as to whether these two can -or should- meet again. There's also a very subtle and only briefly stated minor theme here about "home" and what it means; Mark is clearly Canadian and Anna French, and neither seems to really be comfortable - in Mark's case, with his profession and his inner life, in Anna's with America and perhaps her career.Is Mark some kind of creepy stalker? Is Anna a naive innocent, or is she planning on using the wealthy stockbroker for his money? The film never really answers these questions thoroughly, never really gets at what makes Mark so unhappy, why he even more than any of the characters actually working in the arts seems so attracted to beauty and culture; instead it peers obliquely in a few long scenes at the intersections, contemplating and watching, never telling. There is a gorgeous lengthy, probing tracking shot that traces an irregular path through the columns in the portico of the Met that seems to exist just to remind us of how beautiful, how stately and granitic art in the form of architecture can be, while the human beings are utterly frail and often incapable of ever reaching the transcendence in their own lives that they can in fact reach on canvas, in strings and percussion, in marble.I don't want to spoil the rather surprising ending, but I will add that what blew my mind even more than the finish of the film itself was learning that the entire film was improvised - on camera. Completely improvised; Jost says that he didn't have a story at all, really except that it had to involve art (a prerequisite of his funding), and he had the last shot in his head from the beginning. I found that out courtesy of his website, http://www.jon-jost.com/ where you can learn much more about this great but completely unknown American independent filmmaker, and buy some of his otherwise inaccessible films.I'd only seen one Jost film before, "Frameup" (1993) which had both the single most irritating character I've ever seen in a film and one of the most powerful and devastating endings I've experienced. On the basis of my memory of that film and this masterpiece, I definitely most see more. All the Vermeers had the widest release of any of Jost's films and might actually be available to some of you, and for its aesthetic pleasures alone - the beauty of the score which verges from neo-baroque to post-Ornette Coleman atonal free jazz, the beauty of the female cast and Chaulet in particular, the sumptuous art and sets, and the striking photography (in 35MM, as far as I know Jost's first in the format) I recommend this to anyone even remotely adventurous.Highest rating

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.