Jan Vermeer: it's all about the light

I want to address a few things, mostly things Sean addressed in his comment.

But first, I want to start naming movies I see as I see them. Not as recommendations, but as opportunities to use them as examples if we wish. And I cannot help myself from saying a few words as I go along:

Doubt: a waste of great acting talent. A movie by John Patrick Shanley who thinks that because he can write a play, that he can direct a movie. He cannot. I cannot think of a single playwright who's adapted his own play for the movies well. (OK - I can think of one: David Mamet) I usually come away with the feeling that they're really telling us - underneath all that money and effort - that you really should have seen the play.

Maya Deren: Stan Brakhage said (in that NYU class) that Maya Deren was the greatest film editor who ever lived. That she had an impeccable command of timing. She was older, and I thing she was something of a mentor to him, as was, I think, Norman McClaren.

I saw that trailer for Eldorado and it looks very funny, so I'm putting it close to the top of my Netflix list, right after Coraline.

I want to use two painters to talk about Storytellers and Impressionists again: Johannes Vermeer and Caravaggio. You can check out the paintings online, although - I'm warning you - you can't make any judgements based on a computer image. Especially about Vermeer.

Caravaggio came first. He's one of the most influential painters of the Western World (although "influence" is not what it used to be). He's a classic storyteller. You stand in front of one of his paintings, and ask, what's going on?, and if you're pretty good with your New Testament you can figure it all out. But one of the ways he told his stories was his use of (what we'd call now) theatrical lighting. It all very dramatic: like spotlights on a dark stage. His light picks out the details and emphasizes what he wants you to see, and at the same time, makes it special.

Vermeer, on the other hand is very Dutch, very Protestant, and very un-dramatic. He shows you people in everyday situations, and you look and you realise that the subject is the light itself(connotation? denotation? I'm sorry, but I think they get in the way) No one had painted light like that before. So, for me, it's a very Brakhage moment: he's saying, look, just look at that light. And everybody who saw those paintings learned from them and it was not until Monet that you got that same obsessiveness with light. (Haystacks in the morning, haystacks at twilight, haystacks in the cold, frosty air.)

Tony the tour guide says: the best Caravaggios in NYC are at the Met and the best Vermeer in NYC is at the Frick. And if you have never been to the Frick, well, you just have to go...