The list of creative artists who have grown perilously close to their models, or their elected subjects, is a long one. Not really the answer that Øystein was hoping for. “I played in traffic, in Prague,” she replies. She now has a partner, Øystein, who is almost a parody of mild Scandinavian tolerance, not chiding her for her fixation on Bertil (for that’s what it is) but gently voicing a fear that involving herself with such a damaged soul is like letting a child play in traffic. Barbora is Czech, and, piece by piece, we learn that she previously lived in Berlin, in an abusive relationship, and that some of her paintings bear the scars. “She sees me very well, but she forgets that I can see her, too,” Bertil tells us, and what he sees is a fellow-sufferer. Ask what the thief might be doing for the painter. Ask not-or not only-what the painter does for the thief. Salvation yarns are always tangled, and this is by no means a simple film. Yet the words that emerge from his lips are profanely adult, and his guttural moans could be those of a wounded animal. His eyes widen, like those of a little boy who’s been given a Christmas present more generous than expected. At first, though it’s a sizable object, he doesn’t notice it. And Ree is on hand for the most wondrous encounter of all, when Bertil visits Barbora’s studio to inspect the picture of him that she has painted. Having heard of the case in its early stages, he is there to chart its winding course, taking in the lows-another crazy crime of Bertil’s, this time at the wheel of a car, leaves him barely able to walk and lands him back in prison-and the more surprising highs. Such is the unlikely beginning of the friendship, or the pact, that lies at the center of Ree’s film. Unfazed, she ventures another request: “I’d love to make a portrait of you.” “That’s possible,” Bertil replies. “I can’t remember,” he says, and you believe him. At the ensuing trial, the artist who created them, Barbora Kysilkova, approaches Bertil and asks politely where they might be. The works of art, however, are nowhere to be found. We see the robbers in the act, captured on CCTV, and they are soon apprehended. One day, in 2015, he and an accomplice break into a gallery in Oslo and steal two large oil paintings-removing them from their frames, rolling them up like rugs, and leaving through the back door. To judge by this movie, the demons come and go as they please.īut something amazing happens in “The Painter and the Thief.” Bertil becomes a picture. But I let them out at times.” If you say so, Bertil. Also, as he points out with a hint of pride, “I have two demons on my arm controlling things. Inked across his chest is the legend “Snitches Are a Dying Breed,” which is more of a threat than a lament. His name is Karl-Bertil Nordland, usually known as Bertil-or, as he signs himself at the end of one e-mail, “The Bertilizer.” He is, you might say, a picture: pale, restless, and richly illustrated. The title has the tang of a fairy tale, and, as in the best fairy tales (or the worst accounts of drug addiction), the mood is quaveringly dark even when things get better, you wait for them to plummet once again. The sequence comes from a new documentary, “The Painter and the Thief,” by the Norwegian director Benjamin Ree. If you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, do both. What’s the deal? Then it hits you: this guy is buying heroin en route to rehab. A hand covers the camera lens, blocking your view, and you hear a murmured transaction. Suddenly, in the middle of the street, he pauses. An icy night in Oslo, and a junkie walks along, wheeling a small suitcase.
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