Page - 77 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Film, Parable, Reciprocity | 77www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 69–98 what lighting and next to which other paintings; in strong exhibitions “works start talking to each other” (NG 54); and Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks “sings” (NG 95) when placed next to other da Vinci paintings in the exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. In Wiseman’s style of filming them, and as human artefacts sharing multifaceted “humanness”, the paint- ings receive the kind of attention and care, the more-than-reciprocity, that in other Wiseman films can be received by humans or animals disadvantaged in some way, though they are also subject to similar risks, suffering inattention or destructive attention. These risks include inadvertently destructive methods of restoration and deliberate vandalism of paintings by gallery visitors (NG 73). National Gallery (2014) is a film that, perhaps more than any of his other films, is indirectly about Wiseman’s film style and its effects. With reference to Leonardo da Vinci’s and Johannes Vermeer’s work discussed in the film, we see how he makes use of the visual play of looking implicated in human animality and spirituality. Although Wiseman does not interview his subjects, in National Gallery (2014) he films an interview given by the curator of the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. His description of Leonardo’s work gives some apt characteriza- tions of Wiseman’s films: the “paintings show figures that are incredibly pre- sent, incredibly vital, and yet extraordinarily remote and other, [revealing] … a quality of thought allied with a kind of pitch of emotion and an intensity of craft” (NG 37). Reference is also made to the spiritual quality of Leonardo’s work that emerges through a “capacity to paint the invisible, the just out of reach … an artist who constantly refines, revisits certain themes over and over again” (NG 38). Similarly, Wiseman has observed that all of his films can be considered as one long film, revisiting similar subject matters,35 while various commentators consider how they take us beyond the patiently observed everyday.36 What techniques are used to take us beyond the everyday? An art historian describes Vermeer’s painting Woman Standing at a Virginal (c.1670–1672) as creating an inaccessible yet inviting “ideal world” – which surprised me with its aptness for the effect of Wiseman’s unflinching realism of “the slightest details of accent and attitude”.37 The art historian characterizes Vermeer as finding “a balance between realism and abstraction … as you get closer, just like [in] impressionist painting that sense of realism dissolves into abstraction, and it remains forever elusive … creating a barrier between our world and this ideal world represent- ed in the paintings” (NG 90). She says that she has given many different inter- pretations of this “very ambiguous painting”, but with the “absolute regular- 35 Atkins 1976, 87. 36 Christley 2015. Christley describes Wiseman’s most recent film, In Jackson Heights, as follows: “Within a small precisely defined set of city blocks … is an incalculable human animation, defiant of geography. Through brilliant planning and a variety of miracles of timing, this small film suggests the infinity.” 37 Weil 1973, 143.