HOT DOCS 2022 | MOVIE REVIEW: "The Thief Collector" Spins a Fascinating Tale of Stolen Art and Speculation
10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
Behind a bedroom door in Cliff, New Mexico hung a painting for thirty-two years. No one, besides the couple who owned the house, knew of its importance, worth, or notoriety until after they passed away in the early 2010s. Then, upon the unknowing recovery by an antique shop, the painting was rediscovered, and it shocked the art world. The painting, “Woman-Ochre” by Willem de Kooning, had been stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985. Its price tag? One hundred and sixty million dollars.
How then did a $160 million dollar painting end up behind the bedroom door of Jerry and Rita Alter? That’s what The Thief Collector looks to find out.
Jerry and Rita Alter, two former public school teachers, were known to their friends and family as mild-mannered, fun-loving, and honest people. Despite the shoe-string budget usually associated with teaching, the Alters spent the course of their 50-plus years married traveling from exotic locale to exotic locale. They collected trinkets from all over the world: spears from Africa, ornaments from Nepal, even art from the beaches of Tahiti. But their most prized possession, “Woman-Ochre”, came to them in a very different way. Because despite how their friends perceived them, evidence suggests that Rita and Jerry may have been living a double life as thrill-seeking art thieves.
The Thief Collector reconvenes the family, friends, and investigators who knew the Alters and “Woman-Ochre” best, piecing together how a pair of teachers not only stole one of America’s prized paintings, but bankrolled their world travels. Interviews, news stories, and archival footage is mixed with comedic reenactments by Glenn Howerton and Sarah Minnich playing the Alters. It is a fascinating and quirky exploration of two Southwestern weirdos, who may or may not have been big-time cat burglars.
But where other documentaries would run out of runway, The Thief Collector makes an intriguing pivot from the story of “Woman-Ochre” to a collection of stories published by Jerry Alter late in his life. To parse out the fiction and nonfiction of these stories is where The Thief Collector is at its most engaging - for Alter’s book doesn’t just storyboard art heists, but detail bouts of smuggling, adultery, and murder. How much of what is written in Alter’s book is true? How much can you trust the words of a man known to be as egocentric as he was eccentric; of a man who spent his last few decades in the world hiding a painting worth hundreds of millions of dollars?
It then begs the question, for me as a viewer, how well do I really know anybody? There’s no “hard evidence” - besides “Woman-Ochre,” of course - that the Alters actually stole the painting. There’s no proof of any other art thievery or smuggling, though genuine Victor Higgins paintings and Remington statues were also found in their estate. And despite their detailed diaries, there’s nothing concrete fingering the Alters as perpetrators to a number of other art heists in the Southwest during their time there.
But The Thief Collector doesn’t hurt for lack of evidence. The entertainment is in the speculation. The Alters are not unlike D.B. Cooper, another great robber of the 20th century. Except, we know who the Alters were. But do we really? To know of someone is not to actually know them, as The Thief Collector suggests. That, in and of itself, is just as fascinating.
Acting/Casting - 2 | Visual Effects and Editing - 1 | Story and Message - 2 | Entertainment Value - 2 | Music Score and Soundtrack - 1 | Reviewer’s Preference - 2 | What does this mean?