“We wanted to show a side of drugs you hadn’t seen before, the ugly truth of what happens when the party has ended.”īut what about when both Nordland and Kysilkova (who struggles with her past as an abuse victim) become a danger to themselves? “It’s a huge dilemma for a documentary filmmaker,” said Ree, “especially on a film like this when you spend so much time with them. “We talked about the glorification of drugs in the media,” Ree said. It’s a dramatic moment, as is his decision to get on a motorcycle - with catastrophic results. Ree engaged them in discussions of what he needed to see when Nordland is about to enter rehab, he invited Ree to film him resisting his girlfriend as he scores heroin. I am the one who constructs the two perspectives of Barbora and Karl-Bertil.” It plays on a meta level it’s about storytelling. “The camerawork is my personal artistic choice,” said Ree. I also talk about dramaturgy and filmmaking with them so they understand why we film something.”Ĭlearly, the artist and her subject know that their relationship is a movie, and they are complicit in its unfolding narrative. Of course, we shared a common trust with each other. But after two months they were unaware of the camera. They play the role of themselves and the role they want to be. “In the beginning, you have to spend a lot of time with them,” he said. Ree filmed the deepening interaction between the painter and the thief over almost four years, so that eventually they forgot he was there. Seventy percent of the time, Ree was his own one-man camera team, which is partly how he got his subjects to feel so comfortable in front of the camera. If you fuck up the positioning and focus, you won’t get the same subtext and complexity of a scene.”īenjamin Ree shooting “The Painter and the Thief” You have one shot at knowing where to position yourself. When in the crucial moments an amazing cinematographer is filming, it’s like dancing with the subjects. To be there is to be present and observe with a camera. “It’s difficult to do something similar in a fictional film. “That’s what I love about documentary filming,” Ree said. That early scene has its own narrative that mirrors and explains the whole movie. The scene ends with him accepting her again and they give each other a hug.” I heard him talk about this at a Norwegian screening of the film: maybe it was the first time he was truly seen in his entire life. “The immediate thing is that Karl-Bertil feels appreciated and seen for the first time. What did Ree see as the scene played out? “There are so many things going on at that moment,” he said. He pushes Kysilkova away when she goes over to comfort him, then he walks up to his portrait, crying. He is gobsmacked, his eyes riveted on the painting. The cinematographer Kristoffer Kumar holds on Nordland as waves of emotion cross his face. That extraordinary moment could only unfold in a cinéma vérité film. That’s when I knew it was not going be a short-film documentary.” The crucial moment for me was when Karl-Bertil saw himself painted for the first time. I didn’t know anything about where the story would end. “She had a lot of questions about his tattoo - ‘snitchers are a dying breed’ - and I immediately saw Karl-Bertil and Barbora had chemistry. “I came in early in the process of Barbora and Karl-Bertil getting to know each other,” Ree said in a phone interview. Ree started to shoot a 10-minute short in 2016 - until he witnessed the moment when the painter first showed Nordland her painting of him. Oscars 2023: Best Animated Feature PredictionsĮarly Best Animated Feature Prospects Include 'Turning Red' and 'Inu-Oh'ĥ0 Directors' Favorite Horror Movies: Bong Joon Ho, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, and More
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