Guy Pearce and Claes Bang give excellent performances as the morally dubious artist Han Van Meegeren and an investigator working for the Allied occupation force in postwar Netherlands. The costumes and sets are well done and I appreciate the attention given to the often-overlooked story of the public thirst for revenge against collaborators in postwar Europe.
The problem is that the first hour of the movie is set as a ridiculous cat-and-mouse game in which the artist Van Meegeren won't tell the investigator Pillar that he forged the Vermeer painting he is accused of selling to the Nazis...even though he is imprisoned and facing both a capital trial and a potential lynch mob. I understand that it would be hard to make a movie without this device, but it is completely ridiculous that an accused man would hide his main defense.
When Pillar finally learns the truth and asks Van Meegeren why he didn't mention this earlier, Van Meegren just says "you needed to find out for yourself, or you wouldn't have believed me". It was a lame line when Glinda told it to Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz and it's even more lame here.
The problem is that the first hour of the movie is set as a ridiculous cat-and-mouse game in which the artist Van Meegeren won't tell the investigator Pillar that he forged the Vermeer painting he is accused of selling to the Nazis...even though he is imprisoned and facing both a capital trial and a potential lynch mob. I understand that it would be hard to make a movie without this device, but it is completely ridiculous that an accused man would hide his main defense.
When Pillar finally learns the truth and asks Van Meegeren why he didn't mention this earlier, Van Meegren just says "you needed to find out for yourself, or you wouldn't have believed me". It was a lame line when Glinda told it to Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz and it's even more lame here.