If The Queen’s Gambit is an intoxicating study of Chess, The Last Vermeer is a fascinating study behind the art world’s finest rip offs.
Based on a true and incredibly story that makes us question the authenticity of all museum art, the film’s opening takes place May 29, 1945, three weeks after Hitler’s Reich. While Joseph Piller (Claes Bang), a Dutch Jew, was fighting in the Resistance during the Second World War, the witty, debonair aesthete, Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce) was hosting hedonistic soirées and selling Dutch art treasures to Hermann Goring and other top Nazis.
Following the war, Piller becomes an investigator assigned the task of identifying and redistributing stolen art by the Nazis, resulting in the flamboyant van Meegeren being accused of collaboration — a crime punishable by death.
The first painting in question is the stunning Vermeer masterpiece ‘Christ and the Adulterers’ discovered in an old crate in an Austrian salt mine. Apparently, Vermeer painted approximately thirty paintings his entire career but made a fortune, because it’s the art critic who decides its worth, thus its fame. It’s fate. And his fate. His fame never kicked in, but Han believes he can paint like the Masters of centuries-past. The famed Vermeer’s meaning is said to be about ‘forgiveness’ which provides some irony as to whether Han should be forgiven, too. He’s considered a third-rate artist and a first-rate opportunist.
It’s Han (Pearce) who steals the show not the paintings. He’s a painter, an artist, an art lover. And he’s full of surprises though he’s not surprised by Piller’s visit to question him. This is where the story begins…
Despite mounting evidence, Piller, with the aid of his assistant (Vicky Krieps), becomes increasingly convinced of Han’s innocence and finds himself in the unlikely position of fighting to save his life.
The screenplay by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (Children of Men, Iron Man) pops with intellectual delight. How does one tell if a painting is real? Intuition? Scrutiny? Composition? Technique? Don’t be so sure. Perhaps the viewer is the true co-conspirator…
There’s about to be a huge influx of books and films about WWII be it espionage, lies and women as spies. The Last Vermeer, much like the painting, will be a hard act to follow. In the meantime, next time you’re studying the walls of the Met or the Louvre, you might question authenticity.