If there were to be a biopic made about the ingenious art-forger Mark Landis, the only actor who could emulate his nasal voice and pitifully craven demeanour would be John Malkovich. For more than three decades, Landis—who is in his late fifties, and has been diagnosed with a variety of mental illnesses throughout his life—has been forging works of fine art by lesser-known painters, and donating them to art museums across the United States. Landis and his forgeries are the subjects of Sam Cullman and Jennifer Grausman's Art and Craft, a documentary with, it emerges, an appropriately simplistic title.

Along the way, Landis has assumed false identities—most fascinatingly, Father Scott, a Jesuit priest—and invented a recently deceased sister, Emily, in whose name he sometimes bequeaths works. (He also gives on behalf of his mother, who genuinely existed—she died only a few years ago—and to whom he was very close in the final years of her life.) Since many art benefactors are wildly enthusiastic eccentrics, and since Landis—who, the film concludes, most probably suffers from bi-polar disorder—can easily ‘play’ the part, his scheme went undetected.

Fascinatingly, because has does not accept payment, royalties, or even tax-deduction guarantees for any of the forgeries, Landis has never committed a federal crime and, therefore, cannot technically be prosecuted. Nonetheless, when Matthew Leininger of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art uncovered Landis’ trickery, he became obsessed with taking him down—or at least getting him to stop. Leininger, himself an obsessive-compulsive, catalogued the dozens of places across the country where curators and registrars had been hood-winked into adding Landis’ fakes to their holdings. Landis, Leininger worked out, had sometimes managed to get the same fake into as many as six different institutions.

Landis, who appears at least fifteen years older than he is, does not look to be a particularly well man, mentally or physically, but he is seemingly content with life and clearly takes pride in what he does—even though he probably knows it is wrong, at least morally so. He does not forge works for the money—he lives, by all appearances fairly comfortably, if in moderate disarray, from an income afforded him by his late mother’s estate. Landis makes fakes because he’s extremely good at it, and finds joy in the idea of mimicry and the process of perfecting an imitation. He ‘does’ the same works repeatedly, he says, because he gets better every time.

What a pity, then, that Art and Craft takes so little pleasure in describing his pursuits. (A creole-style jazz soundtrack is not enough by itself to lighten the mood.) The film dryly catalogues his life, including his several nervous breakdowns (the first at age 17) and the overall dysfunction of his family. Rather than celebrating Landis’ quirks, the film takes pity on him, especially in his remarkable and entertaining devotion-cum-addiction to old movies and TV shows, which he watches non-stop while he draws and paints and which provides him endless quotes to drop into everyday conversation. Leininger’s detective skills are vaguely interesting but, by themselves, they don't give the film enough forward momentum. Landis has no real interest in being an artist himself; his forgeries are his life’s work. Had the film’s construction reflected Landis’ happiness in what he does, it would almost definitely be more entertainment than dreary indictment.

New Zealand International Film Festival: Art And Craft
D: Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman (USA, 2014, 83 minutes)
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