‘It’s just a renovation,” quips Rijksmuseum director Wim Pijbes. “How complicated can it be?”
At that point, we’re a good two hours into Oeke Hoogendijk’s two-part documentary about the 10-year process of sprucing up the Amsterdam museum, one of the greatest in the world. Contractor bids have come in at double the budget, a prior museum director has quit for reasons he insists are “personal,” and the powerful Dutch cyclists’ lobby has blocked an entrance design that would force them to make a slight detour.
In other words, it’s like renovating your house, if your house came with priceless Rembrandts and Vermeers, and endless layers of bureaucracy. That probably sounds excruciating, but the film is enthralling, despite a few too many shots of mud puddles on the construction site and slow pans over the roof.
In addition to Pijbes, a brusque go-getter clearly born to be a CEO, the main figure is the director of collections, a man with the unimprovable name of Taco Dibbits. “I’m in love with this collection,” he admits. His devotion, and that of the other curators, elevates the film well beyond the squabbling and setbacks. Hoogendijk ends the movie just before the museum reopens; but her last, soaring image is a stirring vision of what made all the agita worthwhile.