The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
More Bang for your art buck
Dutch actor stars in another, slightly less successful drama involving paints, canvases and falsehoods
Earlier this year, U.S. movie audiences were treated to “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” an art-centric and artful slice of noir starring Danish actor Claes Bang.
Now comes “The Last Vermeer,” which also stars Bang and is concerned greatly with art — specifically, as with the other film, with the subjectivity of experts’ appreciation of it and with the forgery of it.
And like “Heresy,” “Vermeer” debuted last year at a film festival and comes via a division of Sony Pictures.
Well, with all that established, were you to make time for but one Claes Bang art jam this year, it should be “The Burnt Orange Heresy.”
That’s not to say, however, that “The Last Vermeer” isn’t without its intellectual charms.
Helmed by first-time director Dan Friedkin and adapted from Jonathan Lopez’ book “The Man Who Made Vermeers,” the film is set in the Netherlands soon after World War II.
Bang portrays Lt. Joseph Piller, a Jew who fought with the Dutch Resistance and now finds himself working as a government investigator.
His work leads him to Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce), a flamboyant painter whose star once was on the rise and is now
suspected of selling stolen Dutch art treasures — most importantly, a piece by 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer — to Hermann Goring and other top Nazi officials.
Men are being shot in the street for crimes involving collaboration with Nazis.
Although he’s not exactly interested in that fate, van Meegeren plays coy with Piller — “I’m a painter. And an art lover. And, of course, I take my opportunities when I can,” the former says when the latter asks him if he’s an art dealer — and so Piller initially finds him exhausting.
However, as “The Last Vermeer” unfolds, Piller begins to suspect van Meegeren is innocent and sets about to prove it with the help of his beautiful assistant Minna Holmberg (Vicky Krieps, “Phantom Thread”) and hired henchman Espen Vesser (Rolland Moller, “Skyscraper”). (Van Meegeren hooking the always-interested-ina-drink Vesser on his topshelf whiskey is a fun little diversion in “The Last Vermeer.”)
Van Meegeren’s true crime is far more interesting than selling works that weren’t his to sell.
While Bang is our leading man in “The Last Vermeer,” it is Pearce (“L.A. Confidential,” “Memento”) who keeps the affair as artistically seductive as it is at its best with an elegant performance. He is in veryfine form late in “The Last Vermeer” as van Meegeren finally has his day in court.
Bang, whose myriad other credits include “The Square” and “The Affair,” is enjoyable opposite Pearce, but the actor was far more interesting portraying an artist with questionable morals himself in “Heresy.”
Working from a screenplay by James McGee, Mark
Fergus and Hawk Ostby, Friedkin — whose credits are largely as a producer, with a bit of stunt work thrown in for good measure — is uneven in this first directorial gig. “The Last Vermeer” never frustrates, but it also struggles to captivate, despite a story that should be entirely engrossing.
“The Last Vermeer” isn’t that.
Nonetheless, its examination of what makes a work of art worthy of everlasting praise and who gets to decide that it is proves to be tasty food for thought — even if another film recently served it up in a more-delicious recipe.