Van Meegeren: The Forger Who Fooled the Nazis

The life of legendary Vermeer forger Han van Meegeren is a fascinating story, but apparently Andrew Graham-Dixon thinks his ego and inept simplification of history are endlessly more interesting topics.

This is not a documentary; it's the worst kind of narcissistic, pseudo-journalistic, navel-gazing tripe, utterly ignoring a reporter's duty: to inform about a subject, truthfully, and as objectively as humanly possible.

Instead, Graham-Dixon considers himself the 'star' of this show; when he isn't constantly interrupting the few interviewees he happened upon, he's busy misinterpreting works of art to fit his sensationalist, narrow-minded, condescending confabulations. All of this meaningless drivel is chaotically intercut by azure-filtered close-ups of a second-rate actor portraying a paltry approximation of van Meegeren, which renders the entire endeavour obnoxiously campy and, considering the esthetically exquisite subject matter, unbearably tasteless.

This story deserves a thorough, competently filmed dissection, but you will not find it here. This, I'm afraid, amounts to nothing more than a fancy camera following a pompous ponce around, interwoven with some first-year film school drama, brought to you by none other than the BBC - an institution I used to love and praise in earlier days, but has managed to fail me yet again.