Stolen

This is a documentary that ought to have been better than it is, with a fascinating subject, an impressive array of interesting characters and interested commentators, and the participation of Albert Maysles, godfather of direct cinema. But despite an Audience Award at Sundance, Rebecca Dreyfus’s documentary doesn’t add up to much of anything. It recounts the unsolved mystery of the 1990 robbery of 13 paintings (including 5 Degas, 2 Rembrandt, and one of the 35 Vermeer paintings extant) from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Using archival footage and the voices of Blythe Danner and Campbell Scott, it narrates the collecting efforts of Isabella and her agent, Bernard Berenson. It allows the authors of three novels about Vermeer to wax emotional about the painter’s mystery and magic, and the rare value of the stolen painting, and various hangers-on to enthuse about Mrs. Jack and her museum. It follows the efforts of an aged art detective, in the final throes of skin cancer, to solve the last and biggest case of his career, with cooperation from Scotland Yard and not so much from the FBI and Boston law enforcement, along with the dubious testimony of various con men and admitted art thieves, who point to the presumed involvement of Whitey Bulger and the IRA in the heist. There’s a lot going on here, but it comes to no point of resolution and involves way too much visual filler in its relatively brief running time. The film is available on a Netflix-produced DVD and will soon be shown on PBS’s “Independent Lens,” but will not appeal to those who know too much or too little about the subject. (2006, dvd, n.) *5+* (MC-61.)