Amir Bar-Lev’s absorbing documentary traces the meteoric career of a 4-year-old painter who was taken up by the celebrity machine, which then turned on her (or more specifically, her parents) after a debunking segment on 60 Minutes. The filmmaker is acutely conscious that he is part of the phenomenon he is recording, exploiting an unearned intimacy while trying to retain journalistic objectivity and even skepticism. So there’s a lot going on in this film -- family dynamics, media manipulation, the meaning of art and its market -- and a lot to think about. The little girl, Marla, is cute as a button, and her mother (a dental assistant in Binghampton, NY) is attractive and sympathetic, while the father is the question mark, a factory supervisor and amateur painter who may be an indulgent mentor to his young daughter, or may be a con man. The array of commentators includes Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, who has cogent things to say about contemporary art and its reception. The film is concise and continuously interesting, and the dvd extras carry the story further, though far from resolving the ambiguities. (2006, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-74.)
P.S. I just gave The Departed another look, to see if I had missed something, but this supposed “Best Picture” still strikes me as Scorsese’s worst. There’s quite a lot that’s good in it: dialogue and action, character and scene-setting, suspense and humor, but it’s still just a bloody thrill machine -- and the sole female character is such an implausible construct that the whole film falls apart the minute you think about it.
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