The Painter and the Thief

Raw and human, but overstays its welcome. Artists are just full of themselves, aren’t they?

Really great, but kind of loses steam whenever it focuses on anything beyond the relationship between these two people.

A pair of raw, but also tender, character portraits conflated with an exploration of the limits or dangers of creating deeply personal art. The exploration is more apparent in the relationship between the painter and the thief, but the questions asked of the painter can just as easily be asked of the documentarian who chooses to never enter the frame or even be mentioned in the movie at all. As a Norwegian, the movie made me proud of our judicial system and how we treat our criminals humanely.

Very slow moving. The video seems like it was taken with a cell phone. I found it impossible to like or identify with either of these personalities. I was mostly just bored with it.

I had heard good things about this movie, but I was surprised by how moving I found it.