Mark Reviews Movies: THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 21, 2020

She didn't have to talk to him. He didn't have to respond to her. Something, though, connected between Barbora Kysilkova, an artist, and Karl-Bertil Nordland, a criminal and drug addict, in that moment.

The moment, by the way, was in a courtroom, as Nordland was awaiting some criminal proceeding regarding a recent theft. There was surveillance video of the incident. He broke into an art gallery with another man, and they stole two paintings. The artist of those paintings, as you probably have already guessed, was Kysilkova.

That's how the story of The Painter and the Thief begins. It's a documentary, and yes, the film is one of those cases in which truth is stranger than fiction and we probably would think this tale strains credulity if someone had invented it. That's our initial involvement in the film—one of stunned disbelief that keeps mounting as events unfold. A filmmaker easily could leave it at that, but director Benjamin Ree doesn't.

This may be a strange, real-life story, but Ree wants us to have a better, deeper comprehension of and sympathy for the people involved. By the end, the story no longer seems inherently odd, because we can understand why it happened as it did. For these particular people, there was probably no other way that it could have happened.

The basic story begins with Kysilkova, who had recently moved from the Czech Republic to Oslo, and the news that her paintings had been stolen. The presence of those paintings in the gallery was a big deal for the artist, since it was the first time any of her work had been shown in her new hometown, or that's what she's willing to reveal to the filmmakers at first.

Some oddities arise in the investigation. First, the two men who stole the paintings did nothing to hide their identities from the cameras in the gallery. Second, they only stole these paintings, which were featured prominently in the front windows of the gallery. Third, they took their time in removing the canvasses from the frames. Most thieves would simply cut a painting from the frame. These guys didn't. They—or maybe just one of them—took the time and effort to remove the nails holding the canvass in place.

Finally, the men were caught, but the paintings weren't recovered. In that courtroom, Kysilkova approaches Nordland to find out what happened to them. He doesn't remember. He was high and barely recalls the crime. What he does know—and what he tells the artist when she asks why he chose the painting he walked out of the gallery with—is that he thought the work, of swans nestled together by a lake, was beautiful.

Kysilkova then asks a question that will change everything for these two strangers: Would he meet with her to model for a painting? He agrees.

The proceeding story is fascinating, as one would expect, given the circumstances of this unlikely relationship. Ree's approach to telling it, arguably, is even more so. In a very unimposing manner, the film documents how this relationship evolves, as Kysilkova thinks she'll use her offer for Nordland to serve as a model as a way to get information from him. Quickly, though, the façade seems to become a reality.

The artist becomes less interested in the thief's knowledge about the missing painting. She wants to study him, to get to know him, and to capture his essence as purely as possible on the canvass. There's a devastating moment when Nordland, caught completely off guard by the finished painting in front of him, begins sobbing as if from the very depths of his soul. No one, he tells Kysilkova, has ever seen him in this way—as a person worthy of being the subject of a work of such beauty.

We think we know the whole story of the relationship at this point, but Ree's storytelling is more cunning than that. At a key moment, when Nordland has seemingly disappeared, the filmmaker stops the story in progress and essentially rewinds to the beginning of the pair's meetings.

Now, we watch it unfold from Nordland's perspective, with his interpretation of what has happened being the focus. Kysilkova, we hear and see, wasn't so quick to drop the subject of the missing paintings. Nordland has an entire life happening when he isn't meeting with artist. He isn't, as Kysilkova might see him, just some kind of easy-to-see but difficult-to-explain paradox—a sad and lonely criminal and drug addict with a deep appreciation for art. There's a whole person, with a history and a mind and wounds and a life that wasn't even able to obtain dreams for which to strive, beneath Kysilkova's—and, by extension, our—perspective of him.

Ree utilizes this narrative trick a few times over the course of the film, but in its implementation and goals, the device is much more than a trick. Its purpose is reveal how much these people—as close as they seem to become—assume or don't know about each other, as well as how they might lie about or hold back certain information because it's too much to confront. Kysilkova wasn't only upset about the paintings and determined to reclaim them because they were shown at a gallery in Oslo. Like Nordland, she has her own past and pain and desire to move forward with her life, and also like him, she doesn't know how.

Is it possible they recognized this shared uncertainty in that moment in the courtroom? Who knows how fate or the universe or our own unique experiences bring us together, but in the end, who really cares? Isn't the connection itself, as well as the people who have made it, more important than the story? That's Ree's belief, and The Painter and the Thief encapsulates it.

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