Stolen art, wartime guilt and a showman with a paintbrush drive The Last Vermeer, a 2020 drama directed by Dan Friedkin. Guy Pearce, Claes Bang and Vicky Krieps lead a 117-minute story set in the uneasy months after the Second World War.
What is The Last Vermeer about?
The fighting has stopped, but the accounting has only begun. A soldier who also served in the Dutch resistance is given the job of tracing artworks that were looted or changed hands during the war. His inquiry narrows to one canvas in particular: a Vermeer that ended up with the Nazis. The man who sold it is a flamboyant figure from the art world, and a forger. As the investigator looks harder at the sale and at the seller, the question shifts from who profited to what exactly was sold, and the case becomes far less simple than a matter of collaboration with the enemy.
About the cast
The credited cast is led by Guy Pearce, Claes Bang and Vicky Krieps, with Roland Møller, August Diehl, Olivia Grant, Adrian Scarborough and Andrew Havill in support. Dan Friedkin is the film's only credited director. The story turns on two opposed figures, a disciplined investigator and a theatrical painter, so much of its weight rests on the scenes that bring those two together.
Context & significance
The Last Vermeer belongs to a strand of period drama concerned less with battles than with what a war leaves behind: missing property, compromised reputations and the hard question of who did business with whom. Art is the lens here. A single painting carries the plot, and the name of the painter in the title signals how much value, money and national pride can hang on one signature. The film is catalogued as a drama and as a production of the United States, although its story is rooted in Dutch wartime experience. At 117 minutes it has room for both an investigation and a portrait of a man who enjoys being looked at.
Watching The Last Vermeer on Ktime
The Last Vermeer is available on K-Time with a Persian dub, which makes it an easy choice for family viewing in Farsi. Playback needs an account login, while this page can be read by anyone. The K-Time interface is in Persian and is designed for Iranian viewers living abroad.