Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival January 23, 2020.
a Benjamin Ree film
Plot
Two of Barbora Kysilkova’s paintings get stolen and the men responsible get caught. In court, Barbora gets a good look at one of them, Karl Bertil-Nordland, and she just wants to paint him. Barbora spends time with Karl and develops a friendship with him.
Blaine: One of the things that is interesting about “The Painter and the Thief” is that it’s a documentary, but it doesn’t feel like a documentary at all. The way it is told feels more like a feature film. Benjamin Ree, a former investigative reporter, found Barbora Kysilkova’s story on the cover of a newspaper and was interested in making a 10 minute documentary about her. He contacted Barbora after the trial was over, to see if it was ok. Barbora was fine with it. Barbora was already having a friend of her's shooting footage of her working on her paintings, and that footage was added into the documentary. Benjamin was also lucky enough to get his hands on the courtroom sketches, and the surveillance footage of Karl Bertil-Nordland, and his partner stealing the paintings.
Originally, “The Painter and the Thief" was only going to be about the crime and Barbora’s work, but it became something more as Benjamin continued shooting it. Karl Bertil-Nordland was getting all emotional when he saw a finished portrait Barbora had done of him. It was at that moment that Benjamin realized that there was more to come. Benjamin decided to spend more time on the project and see what would happen between Barbora and Karl. The time Benjamin spent with Barbora and Karl documenting what was happening in their lives lasted three years. Shooting “The Painter and the Thief” was like shooting a home movie. And this documentary is about the relationship between the two, but there is a third person involved with this relationship and that is director Benjamin Ree, even though he’s never in front of the camera, only behind, but his presence was there.
Another thing about this documentary that is interesting is that it shares a story about someone who steals from a painter, and the painter doesn’t hate who is responsible. Instead this painter sees something unique about the thief and wants to see him on a canvas. Barbora Kysilkova looks like the type of person who is open minded and is a people person. I mean she loves to look at things that’ll give her ideas for paintings.
Barbora spends a lot of time in her man cave, being surrounded by the work that she has done, and she just paints and paints and paints. You can tell art is everything to her in life judging by seeing the way she lives. And the work she does is breathtaking. Barbora has very skilled hands and has an eye for detail. She also sees things in an artistic way. Karl got completely blown away when he saw that finished portrait of himself that Barbora had done. He was speechless and cried because it was so beautiful.
Judging by the looks of it, Karl is a art lover. He shows Barbora his home and he has frames of art and Barbora is explaining her way of what the art represents. She speaks like an artist. Her spirit is full of artistry. Barbora has an answer for the things she is fascinated with. Karl has never met anyone like Barbora before.
While shooting this documentary, there may have been times where Barbora and Karl forgot the camera was there. There’s a scene where Barbora is having a little argument with her boyfriend and it’s not so much of a personal issue, it’s more like a disagreement. From the looks of it, Barbora and the boyfriend may have forgotten there was a camera focussed on them that whole time.
Barbora isn’t a wealthy painter, but she doesn’t need much in life other than her art, her talent, food, and friends. Of course she still needs money to pay the bills and keep a roof over her head. She tried to get money by selling her art, but she gets rejected, which is a surprise. I don’t know why anyone would turn down any of Barbora’s work. I mean it’s really, really well done. She truly is gifted.
Karl has thought of himself as a screwup most of the time, but Barbora is showing him that he is special through the portraits she does of him. Plus they develop a close relationship. Karl manages to stay strong in life, whether it’s cruel to him or not, and he’s able to pull things together. Karl looks like he is doing good in life and Barbora treats Karl with a lot of respect. Karl did do time in prison, but not for long. Things changed after he got out, but one thing that never changed was his relationship with Barbora. They were reunited after Karl was released.
So much went on as Benjamin Ree was shooting the documentary and he was very excited to have gotten a lot of useful stuff of Barbora and Karl as time was going on with both their lives. Benjamin loved the feeling he got as he was working on this documentary.
A few years back, Barbora had Karl and his girlfriend, now ex, posed nude for a photograph. Barbora takes photos at times and uses them as she is painting, so that way people won’t have to stand still all the time as she is painting them. The photograph that became a portrait is shown at the end, but one thing has been replaced and that is the girlfriend. Barbora put herself next to Karl in that portrait, I guess to show how close both her and Karl are. I like how that ending was shot, by showing the tattoo on the back of Barbora’s neck and then focusses on the tattoo on her portrait that is right beside her. And then the camera moves back to get a full view of the portrait.
Benjamin Ree’s plans for the documentary were different in the beginning compared to how they turned out in the end. Like I said, it was supposed to only be 10 minutes long, and it was going to air on T.V. Benjamin never expected “The Painter and the Thief" to have been chosen to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It was very exciting news to Benjamin that the documentary he devoted three years of his life to would premiere at Sundance.
Benjamin Ree’s documentary helps show the world how talented Barbora Kysilkova is. When “The Painter and the Thief” premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, people were going up to Barbora saying what an amazing painter she is after seeing her work through the documentary. Barbora would even get emails from a lot of people saying nice things about her work.
My rating on “The Painter and the Thief” is five out of five stars
