There is a sequence early into the documentary, where Karl-Bertil, the titular thief, stands transfixed before his portrait. The camera is still, the sound muted. He stutters, then breaks down into weeping.
When a hardened man breaks, it is all the more shattering. Such is the agony of being seen, in a world accustomed to unseeing.
It’s tempting to conclude that this is a documentary about seeing and being seen. But real people are too messy to be boxed into neat narratives. Themes interweave, threads are teased, some taken to their conclusion and some cut off in the middle of a story.
The story begins with the artist Barbara’s attempt to track down her painting that was stolen. The thief made exquisite efforts to prefer the canvas, spending hours to carefully remove 200 stables in the course of a crime. “Why would anyone steal my art?” She mused.
And from there we watch how two tortuous lives become tangled. The artist’s interest in her subject grows perilously close to obsession. Karl-Bertil’s self-destructive nature is a hurricane, rampaging undisguised. But throughout the story, we see him restored and end in a place of hope. Barbara’s darkness is disguised, teased through subtle comments about her, her life. But her spiral is never explicit. The film, the the lives it depicts, is full of ambiguities.
Watch it, if only to nurture your sensitivities.
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