BEFORE: I'm back on the beat after my first ever colonoscopy - probably the less said about it the better, but really the hardest part for me was the prep-work, like for a week before the exam I couldn't eat any seeds, nuts, corn or beans, and I realized I love all those things, so giving up sesame bagels and rice & beans was tough, and corn's like the go-to vegetable, right? Then for a whole day before the exam I couldn't eat ANYTHING, I could only drink clear liquids like black coffee, apple juice, ginger ale and chicken broth - which just wasn't exciting at all, and I don't like my coffee black, so I got sick of ginger ale very quickly, what a boring liquid it is. My sleeping schedule got even more messed up than usual - and my usual is pretty messed up - when I had to. get up at 6 am and finish taking the laxative drink to, well, you know.
Everyone at the hospital exam floor was very friendly and helpful, I was just cranky and out of it because I hadn't had any solid food in a day and a half, and I'm just not used to fasting. My wife came to pick me up because after anesthesia they just don't release you on your own, and we went to a Cuban chain I spotted down the block, and I went crazy on some pork chops, rice and beans and some beets (another thing I couldn't eat for a week, because they're purple). Man, food sure tastes good when you haven't had it in a while.
I have managed to catch up on some TV shows - I finished season 2 of Marvel's "What If?" and I moved on to DC's "Pennyworth" season 3 (with Richard Dillane, who appears in tonight's movie, guest-starring as Batman's grandfather). This last season of the show came out in 2022, but I was kind of busy that year, I guess, or it was streaming on HBO.Max and I couldn't be bothered - but now if I can watch 2 episodes a night, I'll knock out the whole of Season 3 in about five days.
Claes Bang carries over from 'The Square". I don't know much about this Danish actor, if I'm being honest, but I've seen him in THREE different movies about art...the first was "The Burnt Orange Heresy" and the second was yesterday's film. I guess he's gotten typecast as art experts, or else he's drawn to the subject matter for some reason, who can say?
THE PLOT: An artist is suspected of selling a valuable painting to the Nazis, but there is more to the story than meets the eye.
AFTER: This film is set shortly after the end of World War II in Europe, and centers on Captain Joseph Piller, a Jewish Dutch man who served in the Resistance during the War, and works for the Canadian military, in the capacity of sorting through the artworks collected by the Nazis and trying, perhaps in vain, to return them to their rightful owners, if possible. Piller is focused on one painting in particular, a Vermeer that was found in Hermann Goering's private art collection, which was found stashed in a train car, because if you're a Nazi, that's what you do, you keep your valuable art on a train so you can move it around as needed, I guess. Goering had paid an astronomical price for it, because really, there were only like 30 recognized Vermeer paintings in the world.
Piller and his assistant, Dekker, meet with Han van Meegeren, an art dealer and wanna-be painter who sold the Vermeer to Goering, and they arrest him for collaborating with the Nazis, and profiting immensely from the sale. However, oddly, van Meegeren has seemingly given away all of his assets to his ex-wife, and maintains a simple studio in the Netherlands. He's got a new girlfriend who also serves as his assistant, agent, model and muse, and she's married to another man but who cares, the war is over and everybody who's still alive just wants to try and be happy again, whatever that takes.
A group of Dutch authorities want to take van Meegeren into their custody, and it's a bit unclear whether they want to interrogate him, make him disappear or put him in front of a firing squad, so Piller hides him away in a secret apartment, with Dekker guarding him. The artist makes a couple of feeble attempts to escape, then just asks Dekker to bring him whiskey from the storage celler in his house. That's all he wants, whiskey and some painting supplies. Van Meegeren claims that he did not collaborate with the Nazis, but instead sold Goering a fake Vermeer which he painted himself, and he'd found a way to age the painting so it would pass the chemical tests and be certified as coming from Vermeer's time. Piller doesn't believe him at first, but by the time he receives proof, it's too late, van Meegeren has been found by the Dutch authorities and put on trial for conspiracy.
Piller works with the attorneys to defend van Meegeren, because Piller has seen the process by which he can age a painting, and believes that van Meegeren cheated the Nazis out of millions by charging them full price for an authentic Vermeer. Would a collaborator due that? Meanwhile, the prosecution calls witnesses that don't believe that the paintings are forgeries, they're THAT good and they look THAT old. Even though van Meegeren proves his innocence by painting Piller's likeness directly into one of the Vermeers as a background character, he's stil found gulty by the judge, who is more inclined to believe the art critics who originally authenticated the paintings, because they've got no reason to lie. This whole debate goes back and forth a few times before Piller takes matters into his own hands.
The trick here is that we kind of get fooled by the trial into thinking only one of two absolutes is true, either van Meegeren is guilty and collaborated with the Nazis to steal paintings from Jewish people with no intention of giving them back, or he's innocent because he tricked the Nazis and sold them a forgery, depleting their war chest of valuable funds. It's all a bit ironic because if he's guilty of being a forger, then he's innocent of another crime, one that was perceived to be much worse at that time. But what if the truth actually was somewhere in the middle? I mean, there's nothing that says he couldn't be collaborating with the Nazis AND also selling them a forged painting, right? Those two things would seem to be somewhat at odds with each other, but they could have theoretically both happened at the same time.
The weird ending to van Meegeren's story (spoiler alert, stop now if you don't want to know) is that he did get charged with the lesser offense of forgery and fraud, he only got a sentence of one year in jail BUT he died a few weeks after the trial, so I guess the joke was on the court system of the Netherlands. He was the most popular man in that country after the trial, the man who allegedly put one over on the Nazis, and is now considered one of the most successful art forgers of all time. Piller, on the other hand, got awarded the Medal of Freedom by the U.S. government and made a member of the British Empire in the U.K., this led him to start a successful wholesale dressmaking business, because that seems logical. Anyway it was post-World War II Europe, and everyone was just trying to figure out what to do with their lives and how to be happy again.
I think it's a fascinating film, the problem is that it did well on the festival circuit, with screenings at the Telluride Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, but then after getting picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, it was scheduled for release in May 2020, however COVID-19 got a wide release two months before, so all the movie theaters shut down and hardly anyone saw this in the theaters. It finally got released again in November 2020 with a new distributor.
Also starring Guy Pearce (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Vicky Krieps (last seen in "Bergman Island"), Roland Moller (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), August Diehl (last seen in "The King's Man"), Karl Johnson (last seen in "Dream Horse"), Andrew Havill (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Paul Bentall (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Olivia Grant (last seen in "All the Money in the World"), Adrian Scarborough (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Marie Bach Hansen, Tom Mulheron (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Cameron Jack (last seen in "What Happened to Monday"), Susannah Doyle (last seen in "About a Boy"), Richard Dillane (last seen in "Tristan + Isolde"), Oliver Ryan (last seen in "Dune: Part One"), Simon Paisley Day (last seen in "Victoria & Abdul"), Jason Farries (last seen in "Breathe"), Diane Halling (last seen in "The Courier"), Joakim Skarli (last seen in "The Son"), Mark Winstanley.
RATING: 6 out of 10 sacks of wheat
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