The Painter and the Thief, 2020.
Directed by Benjamin Ree.
SYNOPSIS:
A Czech artist forms a surprising friendship with a Norwegian man who stole two of her paintings.
For journalist-turned-documentary-filmmaker Benjamin Ree, the desire to make an art heist movie had been simmering away since the release of his acclaimed chess-champ doc Magnus in 2016. But even at the point of hitting the record button on his latest project – a stranger-than-fiction account of an unlikely friendship between a painter and the man who stole her work – he couldn’t have predicted the places the story would go, or indeed just how little of his art heist film would actually concern the crime itself.
Instead, The Painter and the Thief opts to dig a little deeper, exploring the power of human connection through the poignant, if initially perplexing, bond formed between its two title characters.
It’s the work of one of them, Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova, that opens the film, with time-lapse footage showing her painting “The Swan Song,” a haunting image depicting a white swan lying dead in tall, dark grass. This is swiftly followed by the work of the other: surveillance footage that captures the moment a pair of men with pixelated faces break into an Oslo gallery and make off with two of her works.
Ree’s interest, however, lies not in the events that would ultimately lead to their paths crossing, but the pivotal moment that would follow, when painter and thief meet face to face for the first time. At the courthouse, Kysilkova, now residing in Norway’s capital city, approaches Karl-Bertil Nordland, a drug addict and one of the men facing trial for the crime. She doesn’t interrogate him. She doesn’t berate him. She doesn’t even ask about the location of her paintings. Instead, she asks if she can paint him.
It’s a startling sequence that, in the absence of camera footage, plays out through a series of courtroom sketches which rather neatly captures the essence of a relationship established and framed through art. Though, at first, Kysilkova’s motives might appear somewhat unclear – was this, for instance, part of an elaborate strategy to reclaim her lost paintings, or a cathartic form of forgiveness? – it’s the inconclusiveness and unanswered questions that make the film all the more slippery.
As Kysilkova and Nordland’s relationship develops and their own backstories begin to unravel, Ree and editor Robert Stengård start to toy with linearity and shift perspective – as Nordland observes, “she sees me very well, but she forgets I can see her too”. In doing so, the film draws out with striking effect both the commonalities and paradoxes shared by painter and thief – the similarities between artist and addict.
As their connection becomes darker and more entangled, the film’s fly-on-the-wall approach broaches the morality of aestheticising someone’s pain while also looking to dismantle the very labels its title appears to reinforce. In its most memorable moment, upon witnessing Kysilkova’s finished portrait of him, Nordland, a self-destructive ex-con with the words “Snitchers Are A Dying Breed” tattooed across his chest, is hit by a sudden, overwhelming surge of emotion.
In the end, perhaps it is the very nature of art that The Painter and the Thief aims to tap into: that it’s not the image that ever changes, only our interpretation of it. As such, Ree’s film offers a moving, unpredictable portrait of the power that lies in being seen, for better or worse. So powerful, in fact, that by the time Nordland utters the line “Art isn’t just a painting, it’s so much more,” it feels like a glaring understatement.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
George Nash is a freelance film journalist. Follow him on Twitter via @_Whatsthemotive for movie musings, puns and cereal chatter.
