The painter and the thief12/26/2023 (What influence, if any, did the filmmakers have in her decisions?) “I really feel like I’m a painting junkie,” Kysilkova admits, and given what we see of her method, one wonders whether she might benefit from some kind of intervention. There’s a tortured and obsessive quality to her work that aligns with his personality as well, and a vulnerability that both show the camera that makes it possible for Ree to explore the commonalities between them. What appears to be a noble act on her part - refusing to see this ex-con as a thief, insisting on capturing a different aspect in her portraits of him - may actually be a continuation of a self-destructive pattern. The notion that her spouse should have a say in how she seeks artistic inspiration may sound narrow-mindedly patriarchal, but Kysilkova clearly has a history of encouraging unhealthy relationships - including an abusive ex-boyfriend - and though she permits Ree’s cameras to film a relationship counseling session with her husband, questions remain about their dynamic. “The moment I have met him at the court room, I really sort of fell in love with him,” Kysilkova tells her husband, Øystein Stene (another fascinating character, who likens supporting her connection to Nordland to letting a child play in traffic). Ree and editor Robert Stengård don’t give us all the information we might need to form a clear understanding of their subjects’ actions, yet their approach is not only more artistic but somehow more representative of real life: People’s motives - and surely those of addicts and artists above all - can be paradoxical and counterintuitive, and though the situation begs some amount of psychological analysis, one senses that both parties are acting on instinct to a large degree. Was this some form of forgiveness on her part or a strategy to recover the missing paintings? And did she really expect a man with the words “Snitchers Are A Dying Breed” tattooed across his chest to come clean about what he’d done with the stolen artwork? The film isn’t clear about the verdict, focusing instead on the connection between the two title characters. What happened next was the thing that captured Ree’s attention: In court, Kysilkova approached the thief who had been put on trial, a junkie named Karl-Bertil Nordland, and asked if he would agree to pose for a portrait (his accomplice is strategically left out of the picture). Then it shows surveillance footage from within the gallery, as two men with pixelated faces break in and make off with a pair of canvases. ![]() The film begins with time-lapse footage of Kysilkova painting “The Swan Song,” a haunting nature morte in which a white bird lies dead in tall dark grass. Ree’s research led him to Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova, who had recently moved to Oslo, where two massive works were taken from the window of her first solo show in Norway. ![]() ![]() Rather, I’m in awe of how things played out, and fully aware that there was a certain amount of manipulation - not necessarily of the facts, but certainly in the way they’re presented - required to produce the cinematic equivalent of a cubist portrait, in which an artist and her unlikely muse are made to overlap, revealing unexpected dimensions of one another over time.īy the director’s own account, at the beginning of what would prove to be a three-year journey, Ree knew only that he wanted to make a film about an art heist (he started the project after the premiere of his 2016 chess-champ doc “Magnus”). I don’t mean to imply that this astonishing documentary isn’t truthful. That’s the word that comes to mind with Benjamin Ree’s “ The Painter and the Thief,” a stranger-than-fiction friendship story in which vérité techniques produce unbelievable results.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |