Directing: B-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

If you have any interest in the objectively wild 21st-century story of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Salvator Mundi, and thus go in to the new documentary The Lost Leonardo, you are bound to leave still questioning the authenticity of the painting. This is clearly by design on the part of director Andreas Koefoed, who is amping up the mystery and the absurdity for our entertainment.

I’m not denigrating that approach, per se—it’s precisely why I went to see the movie, after all. (Pro tip: if you want your own space in a movie theater, see a 4:50 pm showing of a semi-obscure documentary on a weekday. I literally had the entire theater all to myself, which was glorious.)

I hadn’t even heard of this paining before I started seeing trailers to this film, which had me intrigued. It also means that literally all the information I have gotten about this story is from this film, so I can’t help but wonder whether that painting—which sold for an astonishing record $450 million in 2017—was really painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

The film gets into all the myriad twists and turns of its story, since its rediscovery in, of all places, New Orleans, in 2005. Eventually it got restored by New York University’s Dianne Dwyer Modestini, who is interviewed extensively, leading critics to claim the restored painting was “eighty percent painted” by her. I know nothing about how painting restoration works so I can’t speak to the validity of such claims. I can say it’s amusing to see someone declare that the painting is not authentic but Modestini simply did extraordinary work replicating da Vinci’s skill, only to cut to her retorting that she’s not as good a painter as da Vinci.

And make no mistake, the journey of this painting between 2005 and 2017 is nothing short of epic. Presumably its journey prior to that dating all the way back to the 16th century is exponentially more so, but we of course have no access to the details of those five hundred years. The fifteen years or so represented her provides more than enough for a full length documentary feature film in which, at one point, people speak with begrudging respect for a wildly successful, cynical marketing campaign by auction house Christie’s. They succeeded in turning a painting of questionable authenticity into a worldwide celebrity in its own right, prompting people to visit museums and take photos of even plainly labeled copies of it. My personal favorite bit is when one of their commercials shows Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, gazing in awe at the painting.

By the end of that painting’s life cycle—or at least its current phase of it—it has become a pawn in geopolitical maneuvering, particularly between France and Saudi Arabia but with historical context that stretches around the globe. This does make the story rather fascinating even to fine art novices like myself; you really don’t need to be a deep appreciator of art to enjoy this movie.

The film has a few design flaws, however, most notably its frequent vignettes of the interview subjects striking dramatic poses or reenacting their serious examinations of the painting, which devalue the documentary form itself. There is no need for that kind of cornball crap, and The Lost Leonardo has a bit too much of it. It’s far better served when it allows the subjects to speak as their authentic selves, as they run the gamut of personality types, one of the more critical ones being especially gregarious.

There’s a subtle tone to this movie that makes it feel a little too much like, say, a low-rent doc on cable television, yet with ironically high production value. The story itself remains a fascinating one, even if they way it’s told here is undeniably manipulative.

Overall: B