Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Vincent Delieuvin, Frank Louis
Intro:
The camera lingers lovingly on every brush stroke and, for those who love painting and drawing, this is exactly what we want.
One has to admit that, dead white male though he may be, Leonardo Da Vinci is one of those iconic Renaissance artists for whom the word ‘genius’ scarcely seems adequate. Even in his day, contemporaries marvelled at his abilities. In this straightforward, and understandably reverential, French documentary we get plenty of time to ponder his craftsmanship. The film describes itself as a chronological and thematic tour. Basically, it is a walk through an upcoming Leonardo exhibition at the Louvre with a camera prowling the museum at night. And who wouldn’t want to be in that museum alone and without the tourists?
Sometimes in art films, the camera rushes on too quickly but the filmmakers don’t make that mistake here. The camera lingers lovingly on every brush stroke and, for those who love painting and drawing, this is exactly what we want. First time director Pierre-Hubert Martin used to be a cameraman, so he knows how to light and shoot.
Guiding us through the exhibition are two art experts Vincent Delieuvin and Frank Louis. They obviously know a thing or two about the Great Man and his method, and they take us through some of the byways and highways of his technique while we look at the drawings and paintings. Sometimes they overdo the interpretation a bit, with florid descriptions that would be considered pretentious in any country except France, but we learn a lot by the same token.
Then there is the fascination with Leonardo, which is almost inexhaustible as the man himself. Apparently, he always carried a notebook/sketchbook tied to his waist and he was able to jot down an idea for an invention or record a notable face instantly. The notebooks alone could provide a whole exhibition. The curators’ thesis is that all of Leonardo’s eclectic garnerings are really in the service of his painting, which he considered the ultimate ‘science’. Given what he was able to realise on the canvas you can see why he felt that.
His portraits seem to catch something much more than a mere likeness. Like Rembrandt, he is able to condense humanity somehow and all with a few brush strokes on a canvas. Of course, the exhibition also needs to take in the Mona Lisa, perhaps the most celebrated oil painting in the Western canon. In the pre-covid era, it alone attracted nearly 30,000 visitors a day. Yes, you read that right. The last fifteen minutes of the ninety-minute running time are devoted to that painting alone (which is in the gallery upstairs). So much has been said about that painting that it almost seems redundant to add anything. That said, there is no doubt that the longer you stay with it the better it seems.
