‘National Gallery': an eye on art from the inside

The documentary “National Gallery” opens silently, with a parade of masterpieces popping up onscreen, one after the other. Then a soft buzzing sound emerges, getting louder as the view expands to show a man entering a gallery to wax the floors.

That scene sums up the films of Frederick Wiseman, who has been making documentaries since 1967. His movies examine the inner workings of particular places, proving that what may be commonplace to one person can be utterly fascinating to another. Wiseman has applied this approach to a fancy strip club in Paris and the Idaho state legislature, among dozens of other locations, and now he has turned his lens on London’s National Gallery, which houses more than 2,300 works, including paintings by Vermeer, Van Gogh, Titian and da Vinci.

The movie takes a fly-on-a-wall approach. There is no narration, characters are never explicitly identified and no one speaks directly to the camera. Rather, we are left to piece together the stories and figure out who’s who in budget meetings and docent tours, art classes and lighting discussions.

This could all be rather dull, especially considering the film’s three-hour run time. But a good dose of dry British humor keeps things light, and Wiseman has a keen sense of what footage to include. (Even informational tours prove to be utterly engrossing.) We hear the story behind Rubens’s “Samson and Delilah” and one possible explanation for that mysterious skull at the base of “The Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the Younger. At one point, a conservationist holds up an X-ray of Rembrandt’s “Portrait of Frederick Rihel on Horseback” to reveal another painting beneath the masterpiece.

A few thought-provoking themes crop up, including that two people can witness the same thing and come away with entirely different reads. This idea may be most clearly expressed in a drawing session with a nude model. The camera pans from the woman to the students’ works-in-progress, and no two are alike.

“National Gallery” could have used a few more edits; its long run time may limit its appeal. But the film is remarkably engaging and, with close looks at so many important pieces of art, bursting with beauty.