Movie Review: The Painter and the Thief (2020)

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Trading an abusive ex who threatened to kill her in Berlin for a supportive husband in Norway, painter Barbora Kysilkova was eager to start fresh in a new country. Crafting two incredible pieces of art that were featured at the Gallery Nobel in Oslo in 2015, just as her career began to rise, the unthinkable happened as her two "most important" paintings were carefully removed from frames which had secured them with roughly two hundred nails and stolen in a brazen heist in broad daylight.

Both shocked and intrigued, after the two thieves were identified from the video footage and sentenced to seventy-five days in jail, Barbora went to the courthouse to meet the only robber who showed up for the trial in the form of an addict named Karl-Bertil Nordland, the so-called mastermind. Confessing that he'd been on a sleepless four day amphetamine charged drug binge and had no idea what he'd done with the paintings after he made the impulsive decision to steal them, when Barbora asks him what it was about the two works that made him want to take them, an apologetic Karl-Bertil tells her simply, "they were beautiful."

Fascinated by one another, when she invites him to sit for a portrait she's suddenly inspired to paint, he cautiously agrees. Slightly suspicious of her motives, as the two begin to spend more time together, they form an unlikely bond that's as powerful as it is sudden, after Barbora breaks down the walls the private man — an intelligent, former special needs teacher with a traumatic past — has erected to protect himself when he breaks down in front of the portrait she's painted of him.

A contemplative, tender, and moving documentary that won the Special Jury Prize for Creative Storytelling at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, when Magnus documentarian Benjamin Ree set out to craft a film about art theft, he had no idea that it would evolve into an intimate, affecting study of friendship between two lonely souls who've been through so much.

Originally drawn to the topic because he felt that it could be a study of contrasts where “the socially elevated art industry with a lot of cultural capital meets 'lower-class' criminals with rough backgrounds,” once he read that Barbora had requested to paint her thief, he knew deep down that this was the right subject to pursue.

Initially capturing the two during what he estimates to be the fourth time they met, as he chronicled their relationship over the course of three years, Ree's thesis appears to have changed many times over. And to his credit, as captivated as the filmmaker is by the duo, we find that we are right there with him for each surprising twist in this study which proves yet again that fiction is no match for the unpredictability of facts.

From jaw-dropping pronouncements that catch up with our subjects later on, and are played back to us only after we find out what has happened to them, while sometimes we're slightly confused by the jumps forwards and backwards in time, we remain thoroughly engrossed from start to finish. Wanting to know more about key facts that were slid into the humanistic tapestry weaved by Ree, I found myself wishing that the film had been even longer, in order to better understand the two subjects.

Optimistic that the documentary will encourage people to take a good long look at their own stigmas and preconceptions and remind everyone that you can still be a good, kind person despite your troubles, Karl-Bertil's hope is well-executed in Ree's finished product, which makes you think long and hard about the duality of man and nature vs. nurture. And while I think that the dialogue would've been even more impactful if the film's subtitles were yellow since the small white type threatens to melt into the background of the scenes, the emotional work easily holds us in its thrall.

A soaring ode to the power of human connection, kindness, and empathy, as well as the ways in which art can heal us and bring us together by reaching inside to touch us on a level that can't be accessed with words alone, despite some of its narrative stumbles, this film is truly a balm. Making us wonder about the pasts of those whom we walk by on a daily basis, The Painter and the Thief is the type of movie we need right now to bring us together, making Ree's unpredictable documentary one of the most surprising, quietly arresting works I've seen so far in 2020.


Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement DVD Review: Troubled Water (2008)

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From Director Erik Poppe



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Never wavering in his stance as an “innocent man” in the death of a child, once Jan completes his prison sentence, he accepts a position as a church organist. Changing his name from Jan to Thomas Hansen, he settles into the position that conveniently comes with an apartment and transportation in the form of a bicycle, unsure whether or not evil is an act of the God he believes in or the result of himself.

Yet, we quickly discover that Jan/Thomas isn't in the business of asking too many questions of himself as – despite earning the trust and affection of the church's Pastor Anna and her child Jens-- the only way we're able to piece together exactly what happened and question whether or not the death was murder or accidental is through a series of brief flashbacks.

Taking us back to Jan and his friend's startling kidnap of a baby in its stroller, snatched away quickly from its mother who sets foot inside a shop and leaves it unattended in a sleepy Norwegian village, the haunting images begin revealing the bigger picture behind the devastating death. However, as a character, it's hard to feel overly invested in Jan, whether or not what he was involved in was murder or misfortune.

To this end, the film isn't very effective until finally Hawaii Oslo director Erik Poppe's Troubled Water switches point-of-view to let us see everything via the perspective of the baby's mother Agnes from the day of the death up through the present when she wanders into the church and soon recognizes Jan.

What would you do if you saw the man you believed murdered your baby working in a holy place?

For Agnes, whose life on one level essentially stopped the day the child died, the situation becomes a moral and ethical nightmare of epic proportions as she has trouble navigating the past and the present life she shares with her husband and adopted daughters.

Easily the strongest role in the film in a visually hypnotically intoxicating effort with cinematography so awe-inspiring that it seems to reflect every single light source in each scene, Agnes is a much more fascinating character than Anna, who in addition to being insulting to women seems like nothing about her personality goes with her profession.

Unchaste and rather selfish for a pastor, Anna speaks about her son in terms of his representation of what she doesn't have since she became pregnant so young and also telling Jan/Thomas how much she needs him, falling into bed with him after the story about the child murder in what I'm sure would be easily considered by Cosmopolitan as the “worst foreplay ever.”

A richly textured but imperfect film, Troubled Water may be ideal for professors to use as an ethics course assignment for students. Still, overall and despite the powerful performances and technical excellence from the director of photography, the flaws of the overflowing Water outweigh the strengths in terms of cinematic justice.

Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Reprise

Director:
Joachim Trier

Just after snakes, the theme song to Twin Peaks, preachers, Alan Rickman, escalators, and reality dating shows, as a writer, one of the most terrifying items I’m faced with literally several times a day is the blinking cursor on my computer screen. Like those men you just hate to love and love to hate, that cursor taunts me, seduces me, and enchants me to pick myself up, kick myself in the rear, mingle with the backspace key, rely too much on sugarless gum and caffeine, and reach for the thesaurus hoping to create something worthy of that blank page. Why go through the agony? Since as much as I try to put off face-to-face time with the word processor by killing far too many minutes joking around via e-mail, I have no choice but to write, as babies have no choice but to cry, and often the best place to cry to the world and console yourself into serenity is right in front of that flickering cursor. It’s a persistent battle that writers face, whether we want to admit it or not from those smug individuals who claim that writer’s block is a myth to the same annoying ones who never cease to amaze by the sheer volume of prolific work they crank out in a given year. And heartbreakingly, even after one has gone through all of the required phases of the creative process and is justifiably spent-- in need of a stretch, a walk, a laugh or a hug-- the lingering insecurity continues on.

“Do I really want to expose the world to this?” a twenty-three year old character asks right at the beginning of Danish born Joachim Trier’s Norwegian feature-length debut, Reprise, as he stands alongside his good friend, securely gripping heftily filled manila envelopes in front of a public mailbox. Seeking literary glory and all of the fame and fortune that goes with it, both Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) decide to take the plunge, submitting their manuscripts out into that vast unforgiving void of the publishing world as Trier’s restless camera which-- much like its youthful, hyper, never contented and always changing characters-- proceeds to flash forward into the world of possibilities this fateful act would have on their lives, friendships and careers.

While Erik’s work is rejected, Phillip’s is given the benefit of publication and publicity, which unfortunately seems to be more than the young man can handle or had possibly envisioned when he was alone in his apartment cranking out the work filled with fear and exhilaration in trying to satisfy that tantalizing cursor. Institutionalized for six months following a horrifying breakdown, Erik finds his once exuberant pal changed—detached and distant—with a battle-scarred body and glassy eyes either from prescription drugs or disillusionment as he discovers he’s unable to slide back into step with his unruly clique of fellow young men who spend far too much time and money debating literature and music and hiding their total lack of understanding about women with misogynistic rants and generalizations.

Of the three main women in the movie who are relegated to supporting players in Trier’s obvious ode to white European male angst and artistic temperament set to the tune of Truffaut and Godard styled New Wave (in which some of the masters' works cited in Trier’s homage almost make one want to scream out the titles like we’re watching a cover band playing the favorite songs of a mix tape from our past), we’re the most fascinated by Viktoria Winge’s understated portrayal of Kari. With as Manohla Dargis noted an appearance that definitely calls to mind Godard’s former love and one-time muse Anna Karina, Winge’s Kari plays the soulful, emotionally torn and equally conflicted on-again, off-again love of Phillip who struggles to try and go through the motions recreating their most romantic dates, which is especially apparent in a heartbreaking trip to Paris where they realize that not just the fire has vanished but in its place has conjured up two competing magnets wanting to push them apart and pull them together either for love or maybe just comfortable yet possibly ill-advised old time’s sake.

Stylistically inventive and showing off its New Wave roots proudly from the start with some grainy black and white cinematography that-- to cite two of Godard’s titles will leave you Breathless while watching this Band of Outsiders. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as completely enraptured by the work as most of my contemporaries, feeling it lacked the emotional spine more evident in the tenderness of Truffaut (Jules and Jim) and needed Godard’s penchant for wide open spaces (Pierrot Le Fou) as the claustrophobic set pieces and slightly blurry white subtitles start to tire us out in its rambling final act that made me wonder if perhaps working on the screenplay for five years (Wikipedia) had possibly caused the filmmakers to spend too much time in front of that cursor and too little time out on the streets, breathing the air like the forefathers of the New Wave.