This documentary ends with the credits rolling down the screen and Bob Dylan singing "Everything's gonna be different When I Paint My Masterpiece." The sense of yearning and a kind of dissatisfaction with what you know that life is going to bring that Dylan expresses in his song is the way so many parents feel about their children. They want everything for them. They want to give them advantages they never had. They see in their children the good genetic parts of themselves and their spouses (and in-laws!) and yet sometimes they want to yell at themselves: Stop that! Let the child be. Let the child be a child.
This is the way Laura Olmstead no doubt felt about her daughter Marla. Four-year-old Marla loved to paint and seemed to have some kind of unusual facility for color and expression. Her paintings came out like little works of art, and then bigger works or art, and then suddenly they were selling for tens of thousands of dollars and little Marla was having art shows in New York City.
Abstract impressionism is considered by some to express the inner workings of our consciousness, to describe in form and color a deep artistic and human truth. To others it is a scam. Mark Olmstead, Marla's father--not exactly an ingénue when it comes to art--encouraged his daughter in her work. He bought paints and took the time to be with her while she was painting. At some point he began to put the canvas on the floor. Occasionally he allows (late in the documentary) that he taught her to PULL the brush, not push it. But he swears he never finished or touched up her work.
Marla became famous and the family garnered some $300,000 from her paintings, with millions more offered if and when she would paint some more. Laura had misgivings, was uneasy, but she wasn't sure why. Mark saw no downside. Little red dots appeared beside her paints at show, indicating that the paintings had been sold. Indeed all her paintings had sold. Curiously a friend named Anthony Brunelli, ironically himself a painter working in photo realism, which I suppose is as far as you can get from the abstract, served as a sometime broker and dealer. It was as though the artist, four-year-old Marla had indeed painted her masterpiece and was living the life of a princess in a fairytale.
And then came a "Sixty Minutes" piece on Marla the prodigy showing her at work. But somehow something wasn't quite right. A child psychologist was interviewed who had looked at the video and said that it didn't look like this child was doing anything that a normal child of her age wouldn't do, and intimated further that you could clearly see the father's guiding hand. The implication was that Mark had "finished" the paintings or had authored them himself! Marla is a pretty and vivacious little girl. Her mother seems the very embodiment of common sense. Mark seems like a loving and nurturing father. But they become targets of hate mail. Amazing. A segment of the public believes that the parents are scam artists and have bilked a gullible public.
Enter documentary film maker Amir Bar-Ley. He convinces the Olmsteads to allow him into their home with the idea that while making his documentary he will film an entire sequence with Marla at work on one of her masterpieces from start to finish with no help from Dad or anybody else to prove that she is genuine. What we see at times is a reluctant Marla who wants her dad to draw a face or to suggest something.
Mark is caught, not in a lie, but in the logic of his situation. Yes, he had to have "helped" her and there is no doubt (at least to this observer) that in some of the works he guided her choice of colors and painting instruments, which would only be natural. But in the esoteric world of art collecting, if that is admitted, the value of her paintings would plummet. Not only that, but Marla's integrity as a prodigy and his reputation as someone presenting her art, would be compromised as well. So he is caught. And so also is Laura, who wants to tell us that she would love to take a lie-detector test to prove that she in no way misrepresented her daughter's work or her involvement in it.
Whether Mark went further than guiding her is a question that the documentary leaves open to interpretation. The one work shown as completely Marla's (as evidenced by its composition being recorded on film) called "Ocean" may be seen as not on the same level of achievement as her other works. Again this is a matter of interpretation.
In a sense this is also a story about people who buy abstract art for high prices. It is about the vanity of collectors.
How does it end? See for yourself, but of course it may not end until Marla is old and her parents are gone, and even then, what really happened, and what it really means is—as is always the case with art—a matter of interpretation.
(For what it's worth, I have little doubt that Marla was "marketed" especially by her father and Anthony. Just ask yourself, who chose the names for the paintings, "Ode to Pollock," Asian Sunrise," etc.? Not Marla, that is for sure. And when Marla says, I'm done. It's your turn, Dad, I think we get the picture. But I would tar with the brush of "human, all too human" only Mark, Tony and the art collectors, not Laura who knew they would be compromised in some way, and of course not little Marla.)
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)
This is the way Laura Olmstead no doubt felt about her daughter Marla. Four-year-old Marla loved to paint and seemed to have some kind of unusual facility for color and expression. Her paintings came out like little works of art, and then bigger works or art, and then suddenly they were selling for tens of thousands of dollars and little Marla was having art shows in New York City.
Abstract impressionism is considered by some to express the inner workings of our consciousness, to describe in form and color a deep artistic and human truth. To others it is a scam. Mark Olmstead, Marla's father--not exactly an ingénue when it comes to art--encouraged his daughter in her work. He bought paints and took the time to be with her while she was painting. At some point he began to put the canvas on the floor. Occasionally he allows (late in the documentary) that he taught her to PULL the brush, not push it. But he swears he never finished or touched up her work.
Marla became famous and the family garnered some $300,000 from her paintings, with millions more offered if and when she would paint some more. Laura had misgivings, was uneasy, but she wasn't sure why. Mark saw no downside. Little red dots appeared beside her paints at show, indicating that the paintings had been sold. Indeed all her paintings had sold. Curiously a friend named Anthony Brunelli, ironically himself a painter working in photo realism, which I suppose is as far as you can get from the abstract, served as a sometime broker and dealer. It was as though the artist, four-year-old Marla had indeed painted her masterpiece and was living the life of a princess in a fairytale.
And then came a "Sixty Minutes" piece on Marla the prodigy showing her at work. But somehow something wasn't quite right. A child psychologist was interviewed who had looked at the video and said that it didn't look like this child was doing anything that a normal child of her age wouldn't do, and intimated further that you could clearly see the father's guiding hand. The implication was that Mark had "finished" the paintings or had authored them himself! Marla is a pretty and vivacious little girl. Her mother seems the very embodiment of common sense. Mark seems like a loving and nurturing father. But they become targets of hate mail. Amazing. A segment of the public believes that the parents are scam artists and have bilked a gullible public.
Enter documentary film maker Amir Bar-Ley. He convinces the Olmsteads to allow him into their home with the idea that while making his documentary he will film an entire sequence with Marla at work on one of her masterpieces from start to finish with no help from Dad or anybody else to prove that she is genuine. What we see at times is a reluctant Marla who wants her dad to draw a face or to suggest something.
Mark is caught, not in a lie, but in the logic of his situation. Yes, he had to have "helped" her and there is no doubt (at least to this observer) that in some of the works he guided her choice of colors and painting instruments, which would only be natural. But in the esoteric world of art collecting, if that is admitted, the value of her paintings would plummet. Not only that, but Marla's integrity as a prodigy and his reputation as someone presenting her art, would be compromised as well. So he is caught. And so also is Laura, who wants to tell us that she would love to take a lie-detector test to prove that she in no way misrepresented her daughter's work or her involvement in it.
Whether Mark went further than guiding her is a question that the documentary leaves open to interpretation. The one work shown as completely Marla's (as evidenced by its composition being recorded on film) called "Ocean" may be seen as not on the same level of achievement as her other works. Again this is a matter of interpretation.
In a sense this is also a story about people who buy abstract art for high prices. It is about the vanity of collectors.
How does it end? See for yourself, but of course it may not end until Marla is old and her parents are gone, and even then, what really happened, and what it really means is—as is always the case with art—a matter of interpretation.
(For what it's worth, I have little doubt that Marla was "marketed" especially by her father and Anthony. Just ask yourself, who chose the names for the paintings, "Ode to Pollock," Asian Sunrise," etc.? Not Marla, that is for sure. And when Marla says, I'm done. It's your turn, Dad, I think we get the picture. But I would tar with the brush of "human, all too human" only Mark, Tony and the art collectors, not Laura who knew they would be compromised in some way, and of course not little Marla.)
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)