review for All the Vermeers in New York on AllMovie

Jon Jost has described All the Vermeers in New York as "an elegy" for the '80s. The greed, consumption, and alienation that have become associated with that decade are portrayed as obstacles that keep the main characters Mark and Anna from connecting to each other and to what makes life meaningful. As true as this may be, it's a somewhat awkward thematic concept, and it tips the movie into the heavy-handedness that occasionally infects Jost's work. As a filmmaker, Jost has always seemed constricted in urban settings. The American West is a better fit for his visual sensibility, and his social and political convictions come across more forcefully when filtered through the lives of individual characters isolated in its vastness. He takes the opposite approach with Vermeers. The characters seem to be illustrations of ideas rather than people, and the result is one of his most arch and mannered efforts. Even the film's visual beauty feels strained. As if repaying a debt to Vermeer himself, Jost uses his phenomenal talent for light and composition to make repeated references to Vermeer's work that come across as a little too self-conscious. Vermeers was more widely distributed than Jost's other films -- it's one of the few that can be readily found on video -- and even with its flaws, audiences and critics unfamiliar with his more experimental work found it alternately frustrating, thought-provoking, and moving.