Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story) set out to make a documentary about a four-year-old painter, Marla Olmstead, but, as the reporter who “discovered” her says in the film, the story is really about grown-ups. Above all, it’s about her parents, amazed as the abstract creations of a little girl in Birmingham, New York, fetch thousands of dollars from collectors around the world. (Mom worries about whether Marla will be negatively affected by her celebrity; Dad rather enjoys the ride.) It’s also about the people who consume art. Are they buying these paintings because they love them, because of the novelty, or both? Why does it matter if a little girl created them? And how, especially in the case of these non-representational works, does anyone know if they’re good?
And finally, the movie is about the filmmaker himself. After a 60 Minutes story casts a skeptical eye on whether the girl actually is actually much of a prodigy, Bar-Lev wonders, on camera, whether the story is about a child’s unexpected rise to fame or something more like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and how his choices as a filmmaker will shape that perception. (The short film on the DVD expounds on these ideas further and is well worth a look.) I don’t know art, but I know I like this movie about it.
( See Exit Through the Gift Shop for another look at how perception creates art, or at least its value.)
IMDB link
viewed 9/26–27/10 on DVD [Netflix rental] and reviewed 9/27/10
No comments:
Post a Comment