The Painter and the Thief review: A brilliant, moving documentary
Premiering at Sundance in January, Norwegian documentary filmmaker Benjamin Ree (2016’s Magnus) brings us The Painter and the Thief, an unusual tale of crime and reconciliation.
We meet Barbara Kysilkova, a Czech painter based in Oslo, as she learns two of her most celebrated paintings have been stolen during the night. The authorities bluntly inform her that the perpetrators have been caught, but the paintings have not been recovered.
With the case closed, she approaches one of the convicted felons, Karl-Bertil Nordland, a drug addict who has been in and out of prison. Remorseful for his crime, he has no memory of what happened to the paintings (“how can you understand a junkie that’s been awake for four days?” he pleads after being questioned by his victim). He is surprised by Kysilkova’s request that they meet in order for her to paint him, and from that develops a friendship that changes both of their lives.
Ree shows the initial year of interactions through each person’s perspective. Through The Painter’s eyes we see illness of addiction, and the tragedy of those caught in it. Barbora muses that in other circumstances, her new friend might have been Prime Minister, or perhaps a terrorist, had the pendulum swung the other way. This viewpoint makes us see addiction through different eyes – Karl-Bertil isn’t a ‘junkie’ in the way that most movies portray them, or even in the way he views himself.
He’s thoughtful, polite, and well presented (if you ignore the rather ominous tattoo saying “snitches are a dying breed”). He used to teach and practice carpentry. He’s not a bad guy, but inner demons have led him to do bad things and dragged him deeper into that pit of despair. This is never more evident than watching his face crumble as Barbora unveils a portrait of him, and he sees himself as something more than an addiction or a criminal record.
The friendship that develops is touching, with Barbora maternally greeting him with a cheery “good evening, Starshine”. But there’s a lingering subtext: is Barbora being too quick to forgive this man who stole from her? Or does she have other motives for taking him into her trust?
Next we are introduced to The Thief. In a kind of documentary twist on the Rashomon Effect, we see the same events through Karl-Bertil’s eyes, and are presented with a different side of their relationship. Her questions about where her paintings ended up become more impatient, and he suspects something behind Barbora’s kindness.
The knee-jerk reaction is to assume The Painter and the Thief is some kind of poverty tourism, a person of privilege using the incident as an elaborate virtue signal. That isn’t the case – Barbora struggles with money and has a similar social status to Karl-Bertil, albeit with more support through her loving partner Øystein.
As we learn The Thief’s perspective, we see Barbora as someone engaging with personal trauma. There’s little doubt about the authenticity of her kindness, but at the same time it satisfies a fascination with darkness. She has a desire to peer into the fractured parts of Karl-Bertil’s psyche in order to deal with her own history of abuse and neglect. This is what Øystein calls the “practical risk” of their connection.
These perspectives meet in the middle when Karl-Bertil gets into trouble. It’s a crossroads where The Thief begins to turn a corner, while The Painter begins to decline as Barbora’s dark fascinations take a toll on her professional and personal life. Through it all they have each other, and while there are questions surrounding the deeper meaning of this friendship, it is touching to behold.
A story of forgiveness over judgement, The Painter and The Thief is a satisfying journey capped by a surprising turn of events in the final moments. It demands that you look at familiar subjects in a different way, and comes away all the richer for it.