STREAMING CINEMA
Who’s Robbing Whom?
“The Painter and the Thief” charts an unlikely relationship
BY STEVE ERICKSON
“The Painter and the Thief”
almost feels too neat to
be a real documentary. It
starts off with a high-concept
premise: Czech artist Barbora
Kysilkova met Karl-Bertil
Nordland, a thief who stole her
paintings from an Oslo gallery,
and while he was still awaiting
trial she asked him to pose for her
drawings. Their relationship went
through many changes from there.
While the exact chronology of “The
Painter and the Thief” is hazy, director
Benjamin Ree had access to
many intimate moments of Nordland’s
life. Ree fi lms him buying
heroin (although hands block the
camera so that no one is legally
implicated), in jail and in the hospital,
and breaking down in tears
the fi rst time he sees Kysilkova’s
painting of him.
Ree lays out his documentary’s
narrative better than most fi ction
fi lms. “The Painter and the Thief”
starts out looking like a Norwegian
equivalent to Hollywood movies
like “Dangerous Minds,” in which
white teachers condescendingly
improve the lives of their underclass
students.
Kysilkova meets Nordland when
he’s at his most desperate. Explaining
how he got to the point where
he stole her paintings, he explains
that he had stayed up for four days
on a 100-pill amphetamine binge
while also using heroin. He still
seems dazed, weak, and dead-eyed,
although more functional. Before
she meets Nordland, her boyfriend
looks at a photo of Nordland’s chest
and reads out his “snitches are a
dying breed” tattoo.
But if the fi rst 20 minutes of
“The Painter and the Thief” privilege
Kysilkova’s perspective, letting
her deliver a voice-over that comments
on Nordland’s life, it hands
the reigns over to Nordland. In
turn, he gets the voice-over, getting
a chance to speak about his
childhood. While he tells Kysilkova
a story about parents divorcing
when he was eight, addiction, and
gang life, his autobiography also
Karl-Bertil Nordland in Benjamin Ree’s documentary “The Painter and the Thief.”
Barbora Kysilkova sketches Karl-Bertil Nordland in “The Painter and the Thief.”
has nuance. He emphasizes that
he was also a sober student and
that he works at carpentry.
That brings us to another point.
The fi lm’s Christian symbolism is
hardly accidental. Beyond being a
carpenter, Norland, in a car accident
that nearly kills him, gets a
wound on his wrist that turns into
BARBORA KYSILKOVA/ COURTESY OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE
NEONRATED.COM
a permanent scar resembling stigmata.
He himself recognizes the
similarity. Kysilkova later paints
the two of them posed in a pieta.
The differences between Norwegian
and American Christianity,
however, can be seen in the two
societies’ prison systems. Norway
does more than pay mere lip service
to redemption and forgiveness.
Nordland served 75 days for the
art theft, but the crimes that led
to the later car accident were more
serious.
In voice-over of a montage of Nordland
looking pensive in different
settings, a judge reads out his sentence
for those crimes. Yet, as far
as Nordland falls, he is able to pick
up his life again, and his hospitalization
actually seems more oppressive
than his time in jail. (For
a month after the car accident, he
was confi ned to a wheelchair, and
doctors didn’t know if he would be
able to walk again.)
At fi rst, Kysilkova seems a relatively
well-off woman taking advantage
of a desperate man. Her
boyfriend brings this possibility
up, suggesting she’s exploiting and
aestheticizing Nordland’s suffering
for the benefi t of her art. She
angrily dismisses the suggestion
but admits she’s given that real
thought. We learn that the painter
had to fl ee Berlin for Norway to escape
a long-term violent relationship.
She’s also not particularly
successful in the art world or fi -
nancially stable. In a phone call,
she admits to owing three months’
rent.
The level of access that Ree got
is truly surprising. The questions
that Kysilkova gets asked about
exploitation could also be directed
toward him. Nordland seems
shockingly un-self-conscious that
a cameraman is around to capture
him breaking down in tears. Ree
does create distance from his subjects
by layering sound over scenes
with unrelated images.
One wonders if the reality of
these people’s lives could really
be captured so neatly into a story
with twists and turns. But “The
Painter and the Thief” takes an
idea that’s initially intriguing and
goes beyond it, spinning out something
truly impressive.
THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF
| Directed by Benjamin Ree | Neon
| In English and Norwegian with
English subtitles | Starts streaming
May 22 | neonrated.com
May 21 - June 05, 2 36 020 | GayCityNews.com
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