A special thank you to Angela at Tread Lightly, Retire Early for putting the docu-drama on my radar and inspiring me to write this Painting Anna review. The project is close to home for Angela, an intersection of family and career. She elaborates here.

As a follow-up to my recent review of the Playing with FIRE documentary, I thought the two films might mesh well and have some interesting parallels (and maybe salient distinctions?).

I don’t watch television, but I do enjoy taking in a movie. I’m not sure if the docu-drama genre is a new(ish) thing or not, but it’s certainly new to me and something I immediately noted as different.

Maybe more of a symptom of my own neuroses and inexperience with the format than anything else, but I couldn’t help myself from wondering: Is this real? Are they acting right now? How about now? Who is this lady they keep cutting to? I probably did some subconcious mental anchoring by watching the aforementioned Playing with FIRE, a traditional documentary.

Trying my best to abondon this silly internal monologue after the first few scenes, I resolved to just go with it and enjoy… which I did!

Premise

The film opens with 24-year-old heroine Anna Katz, played by Emily Goss, mired in Office Space purgatory. She sits in her cubicle, telelphone to ear, absently listening to the drone of corporate malarky, while witnessing a fellow co-worker in an ajacent office getting chewed out by an overbearing boss.

You know… all that junk.

We quickly learn her radical plan: quit her job, move into a co-housing artist community and follow her passion to become a painter. She has two months of savings runway so it would be a true sink or swim experiment.

For this accountant turned creative, Anna’s goal: “… at the end of two months, I want to know what it feels like to be alive.”

How Thoreau-esque!

How it Plays Out

The meat of the story is seeing how these two months play out. You bear witness to her struggles, both with the creative process as an artist, but also with her decision’s impact on her relationship with her father.

This maturation process unfolds with sporadic interjections from Bonnie Bruckheimer.

Who the heck is Bonnie Bruckheimer?!

Yeah, OK, back to that whole docu-drama formatty thing. Bruckheimer is a successful Hollywood filmmaker. (Remember that whole Ya-Ya pantaloons phenomenon of the early 2000’s? She did the movie adaptation, among many other films.)

The film, in an especially clever way, narrates Anna’s struggle through Bonnie’s voice. She provides color commentary with zinger lines like: “As a producer, or any other artist, you have to create your own way.”

I hope I don’t sound sarcastic because I actually really enjoyed this aspect. Bonnie, was articulate, passionate and knowledgable. It’d be cool to just hear her talk more about her life and worldview, but that wasn’t her role in this film.

Instead, it was to put Anna’s brooding, emotional and sometimes erratic behavior into context and show that maybe chasing your dreams with abandon may not be so crazy after all.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the only way.

Father Figure

The next most developed character in the film is Anna’s father. His own maturation, in terms of his relationship with his daughter, is equally important to the story as Anna’s artwork. A clear A-type personality, he says his proudest moment was watching his daughter get her MBA.

As Anna changes, so does dad. His vulnerability reaches a crescendo when he admits (to himself?) that his initial negative reaction to his daughter’s decision was based on a place of fear. Like any parent, he was scared that his daughter was making the wrong decision for her future and he just wanted to protect her.

He delivers a line which may resonate with your card carrying FIRE enthusiast, but may be glossed over by a casual observer. In discussing his view of career and work, he says something along the lines that he put his head down and worked hard to provide for his family, to provide a sense of security for those around him. BUT, in the next breathe and evident of his evolving worldview, he says: “…maybe that security never existed.”

Bango! Now you’re picking up what’s being put down there pops!

Personal Relation

I’ve seen this story before. I’ve seen it very close to me. Both of my parents are artists.

Now, I must pause to make a point. What is an artist? Who assigns this moniker? What defines a “serious” or “real” artist from a hobbyist? We’ll forgo a deep dive into the world of aesthetics and keep it within the framework of the film.

Anna’s father presents this question, really to the audience, as he casually disparages his daughter’s “doodles” and questions her decision to forsake a “career” for a “hobby.”

Are you only an artist if you can support yourself financially through your art?

Is price/value perfectly correlated with skill and quality?

Van Gogh made over 900 paintings in his life. He sold one…

Frankly, most artists (my parents included, shhhh) are far more skilled at making art than promoting it. And on the flip side of this coin, there are myriad examples of hugely succesful artists that garner massive sums of money for, frankly, head-scratchingly abhorrent eyesores. Sooooo, there’s that.

Conclusion

Painting Anna is an engaging film, pulling from FIRE community tenets, to produce a poignant and personal tale of a young woman’s passion pursuit. The docu-drama format in this context is succinctly explained by this layman as 5% documentary, 95% Lifetime Channel movie. Of course, with any Lifetime movie there comes a certain amount of cheddar. The feel-good nature of the film makes these parts endearing rather than cringe-worthy and you might even catch yourself mentally cheering for Anna. The father figure, combined with the Bruckheimer interview scenes add both context and raise some of the larger philosophical questions. The film does a nice job of presenting some of the FIRE concepts in a nuanced way, while maintaining its focus on the most important thing: do what makes you happy.

What did you think of the film? Do you have any additional film suggestions in a similar vein?