My Kid Could Paint That - Isaac Richter

I haven't seen many documentaries in my life, so this last weekend I went to the video store and asked if there was a documentary they could recommend me. I was pointed to this fascinating story about a 4-year-old girl who became an overnight sensation when her paintings were discovered. They were abstract painting in the neighborhood of Jackson Pollock. A style of art that was always thought of to have a hidden meaning, painted by this little girl who simply picked up a brush and discovered she loved to paint, and she was simply painting the way she wanted to paint, but there was a world of grownups who simply could not understand that and were trying to make something more out of it. And then came this controversial report on 60 Minutes that brought about a theory that Marla (the 4-year-old painter) did not actually paint those, or was helped by her father.
This is an interesting documentary, because it's a film that changed a lot during its making and the filmmaker doesn't try and hide it. In fact, about half way through the film, director Amir Bar-Lev becomes a character in the story. This film employs the Talking Heads and Director-Participant style of documentary filmmaking, first by interviewing Marla's parents, the owner of the galleries that have sold her painting, with Elizabeth Cohen, the journalist who wrote the first article on her and wished everyone would just leave her alone after that, and the 60 Minutes segment that sparked up a controversy became a surprise, even to him. Bar-Lev shows not only the opinions of the people he's interviewed, but he leaves his own voice as he asks the questions and answers certain questions that he's being asked. While most documentaries will present interviews as if they were talking only to a camera, leaving out any trace that there is a person asking them question, Bar-Lev left in footage where the characters, particularly Elizabeth Cohen, ask him questions directly and we hear him answer them.
There's this scenethat is particularly striking in which Amir Bar-Lev sits Marla's parents down on a couch and asks them directly whether Marla painted those paintings, and whether her father helped herin any way. This is after a DVD had been made of Marla painting her latest work from start to finish. Throughout the film, we see Bar-Lev's opinions change and his film take a different direction. It sarts out as a study of modern art, including abstract art, and then into a study of child prodigies, but then it turns into a story about stories. A story about how stories change perspectives and how different people can perceive the Truth, including 60 Minutes and all the different people Bar-Lev interviewed for his film. The interesting thing about Bar-Lev's approach is how he simply lets the story speak for itself instead of arranging things to have the story told his way. He takes accounts from Marla's mother who wants the media to leave her and her family alone, the father who wishes he were as good an artist himself and is enjoying the attention, Elizabeth Cohen who wrote the article and now regrets having given this little girl so much attention and Anthony Brunelli, the gallery owner who is proud to have discovered this so-called "child prodigy" (a term that Laura Olmstead, Marla's mother, says she dislikes). He also shows us footage of Marla painting with her little brother Zane, having fun, obliviou to the fact that her family's making thousands, potentially millions for her out of her paintings.
I find the Talking Heads documentary style the most fascinating, because it doesn't just tell a story, it reveals a story, with all its complications and every conflicting thought that goes through these people's heads, and in this particular documentary, the director acts as a character and brings in his own contribution to the story. He doesn't only capture it, his presence is key to how the story unfolds. He doesn't only give his opinions and he doesn't let his opinions define the story, which is difficult to do when you're making a documentary, which is why I really admire this one. I feel it could work beautifully as a narrative film as well, but the fact that the story was discovered while filming instead of following a script makes the story itself all the more engaging.