The Painter and The Thief (2020) Review: the astounding portrayal of forgiveness and redemption.

Maybe we could meet sometime? Of course, all for the purpose that I’d love to make a portrait of you.

    “Because they were beautiful.” A Czech hyperrealist painter Barbora Kysilkova paints a Norwegian drug addict criminal named Karl Bertil-Nordland who has just come out of jail, when she shows the portrait of the criminal to himself, he is stunned with eyes wide open starts to cry like a child, like finally, somebody sees that he too exists. One of the extraordinary moments of the film.

When she met heavily tattooed Bertil for the first time during his trial of the heist of her two paintings but without any memory of where he kept them because he was highly intoxicated at the time, she asked him why he stole them, he replied, “because they were beautiful.” A very strange offer by her to paint him, which he accepts, begins a story of forgiveness/redemption, a story of an eccentric emotional bond between the painter and the thief, the story of the muse and the artist. Isn’t it interesting enough to make you watch this unconventional documentary?

    “Finally, I have been seen.” The director Benjamin Ree filmed this story from 2016 to 2019 with other earlier videos, footage, photographs, and audio recordings. During the filming, his camera becomes so invisible that you constantly remind yourself that there is a cameraman around them, the surreal story and the artistry of the director make it hard to believe that it is not a fictional documentary. Personally, I am highly impressed. 

Ree’s original plan was to make a short documentary, but the more he got involved in their lives, Bertil's overwhelming reaction seeing him immortalized into a beautiful portrait, and the unexpected friendship between the culprit and the victim, he decided to go for a feature film being completely unknown where it would go.

    “She sees me very well, but she forgets I can see her too.” This is one of the best parts of the movie a hardened addict and big criminal starts to crumble seeing kindness towards him by the painter who has completely forgiven him for his deed. He opens up so easily like he was waiting for someone to listen to his side of the story. He talks about his lonely childhood and past traumas, how he became invisible to people around him, and how being a criminal, his existence doesn’t matter to society. Barbora was the first person who saw through his tattoos, his scars, to his soul. But it works on both sides. We see Barbora seeing Bertil being a self-destructive self, but we also see Bertil seeing Barbora, who has just come out of her abusive relationship, as a lost soul as him.

“It’s like letting your kid play in traffic.” The third wheel of the story is Øystein Stene, the boyfriend of Barbora. A little jealous of the relationship, he is concerned about his partner, who is going deep into a risky friendship with a self-destructive criminal, and he is not completely wrong. When they both are in front of the therapist, he expresses how unconcerned she is about herself, like placing a kid in the middle of the traffic, leaving alone to play there. He is more practical and relatable to us. 

    “The questions I would like to explore here are: what do humans do in order to be seen and appreciated? And what it takes of us to help and see others,” says Ree, who has portrayed the bond born with a universal desire to be seen, listened and understood. Forgiveness over vindictiveness humanizes Bertil, calms his demons, and lightens his humanity. This documentary portrays the second most unlikely couple of the year 2020 after the movie ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ in the same astonishing way to show how beautiful and bizarre the world of human relationships is. The more we observe the story, the more we get absorbed in it.