My Kid Could Paint That.

"Amir Bar-Lev's [My Kid Could Paint That] may take its title from the ultimate philistine lament, but its beef is as much with the people who fork over millions for abstract smears as it is with the folks who cloud the line one interviewee draws between 'prodigy' and 'freak' when it comes to its controversial four-year-old subject," writes Fernando F Croce at Slant.

"As a literary critic, teacher, and occasional film critic, one element of the film that I appreciated was the participation and presentation of New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman," writes Kenneth R Morefield at Looking Closer. "It is rare in mass media these days for a critic to be portrayed as insightful or knowledgeable. Usually the critic is portrayed as pompous, egotistical, and/or completely self-serving. Kimmelman does an excellent job here. He doesn't endorse or refute the paintings but he does help explain their popularity by explaining how some strains of modern art intentionally provoke and alienate the audience. 'Nobody is saying 'fuck you' in this painting,' Kimmelman says of Olmstead's alleged work and why so many people find it refreshing."

Updated through 10/6.

"By the end, Bar-Lev starts crossing the line from passive observer to investigator, culminating in a direct confrontation with the Olmstead family that almost single-handedly raises My Kid Could Paint That from not-bad to great," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club.

"If My Kid Could Paint That is the record of a con, its artists are supremely confident practitioners," writes Nathan Lee in the Voice.

"Some thorny questions about representation and notions of truth got raised when the situation changed, and to his everlasting credit Bar-Lev was ready to handle them," writes Steve at the Film Experience. "My Kid Could Paint That starts off engaging and ends deeply disturbing. It's one of the year's best films."

Eric Kohn talks with Bar-Lev for the New York Press.

Earlier: David D'Arcy and reviews from Sundance.

Update: "Considered within the context of the contemporary doc landscape, My Kid fares well - it tells a story worth telling, not just a tabloid outtake magnified out of all proportion (Crazy Love), weakly thought-out political activism (whatever is playing at the Quad), or a stunt film aspiring to the heady heights of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock," writes Vadim Rizov at the Reeler. "Maybe it's about parenting, or media feeding cycles, or etc. But to this viewer, My Kid seems unfinished, a sketch rather than a drawing, a multiplicity of perspectives without a coherent focal point."

Updates, 10/5: There's "a bad faith that lies precisely in Mr Bar-Lev's studied displays of doubt and unease," finds the New York Times' AO Scott. "Acknowledging that he as much as anyone else is guilty of exploiting Marla is an exemplary postmodern move, but it hardly lets him off the hook. He has made an excellent documentary, but it would have been better if he had not made it at all."

"The longer it goes, the more frustrating it becomes, as Bar Lev declines to come down on one side or the other," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. "It makes his presence in the Olmsteads' lives serve no real purpose other than exploitation of their misery for his own good."

"[W]hat makes My Kid Could Paint That such a powerful film is that the truth doesn't change what the movie is about," counters Noel Murray at the AV Club. "The movie blooms from a quirky human-interest story to become so much more, including a critique of how the 24-hour news cycle grinds up those who get caught in it (and whether well-meaning documentarians can be part of the problem)."

The "controversy is plenty gripping in and of itself, but it also transforms My Kid Could Paint That into a sobering disquisition on America's narrative fallacy: the way that we assign value to almost everything based largely on how compelling the story is, and our relentless need for any given story to change and evolve," writes Mike D'Angelo at Nerve. "Not since Capturing the Friedmans has a docmaker stumbled into such murky territory."

Also, Gwynne Watkins talks with Bar-Lev.

Updates, 10/6: "The heart of this story lies not in how authorship challenges the value of Olmstead's art work, but rather, how it creates a crack in our preconceived ideas of what constitutes precocious artistic talent," argues Paddy Johnson at the Reeler. "Bar-Lev merely reconstitutes the myths that created the phenomenon in the first place.... [T]he ultimate result is a reinforcement of our fears, myths and misunderstandings about contemporary art, with the high praise the film has won among critics only reaffirming its marriage to the cultural status quo."

"[I]n focusing on Marla as a media and market phenomenon, the film gives short shrift to some of the more intriguing questions about what it means to look at a 4-year-old's splattery abstract canvases in the context of art," writes Mia Fineman in a similar vein at Slate. Fineman, who's had a hand in the Asian Elephant Art & Conservation Project, walks us through Harold Rosenberg's definition of action painting and argues, "Marla, the elephants, and perhaps even your own brilliant progeny may be terrific painters - but they're not artists."

Online listening tip. Andrew O'Hehir talks with Bar-Lev for Salon.

Posted by dwhudson at October 4, 2007 4:48 AM