The Painter and the Thief (2020) Drinking Game
Take a Drink: for every one of Barbora’s paintings we see
Take a Drink: whenever anyone mentions drugs or dark pasts
Take a Drink: every time Barbora asks Karl-Bertil about what happened to her paintings that he stole
Do a Shot: in honor of Karl-Bertil’s father’s epic mustache
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
It seems like every year my list of documentaries to watch grows ever higher, and this year I intend on staying on top of things. If this isn’t the heyday of the artform, I don’t know when would have been.
NOPE
The Painter and the Thief follows painter whose two most important works are stolen from an art gallery, and the thief she insists on meeting after his trial, and later, painting a portrait of. The relationship that develops between them is often tested, but a thing of beauty.
A Toast
The Painter and the Thief is blessed with not one, but two central characters interesting enough to carry their own documentaries. Barbora Kysilkova is a painter with a dark past and artistic sensibility who in person is positive and deeply empathetic and the type of person whose easy forgiveness and ability to create deep bonds with people of all walks of life most of us would do well to learn from.
Karl-Bertil Nordland is at first, yes, a thief- and a man whose struggles with his personal demons and addictions threaten to destroy him no matter how much support Barbora gives him. This personal journey on this film is long and both the physical and mental transformation he undergoes is a sight to see.
The production of the film is polished with a keen eye for the small human detail that really enraptures an audience into a story like this.
Beer Two
This documentary has the feeling of a film crafted in the editing room, if not via storyboard. The camera has a habit of being at the exact right place at the right time. One should not ask questions of a documentary like:
“Just how spectacular are the security cameras in Norway?”
or
“Why did the cameraman follow her to the convenience store? Did he know her credit card would bounce?”
or
“Did that filmmaking crew just let that guy go off and drive while high out of his mind?”
Beer Three
If you are going to craft your documentary in such a way, why spend so comparatively short a time on the initial human interest story of Barbora forgiving Karl-Bertil for his crime and utterly blowing his mind with her resulting painting of him?
Verdict
The Painter and the Thief is a perhaps overcrafted documentary with a beautiful enough subject to stand on its own two feet.
