The Maiden Heist

Discreet, elegant, modest... they could show films like this to the goofs who throw tomato soup at museum paintings!

Art has existed since human beings learned to understand the beauty of the world around them, and to capture it, to immortalize it on a surface. Initially, it was on the walls of caves, where our most remote ancestors represented the animals they lived with, the hunts they did and themselves. Whether in vivid color or simply engraved in stone, it was the birth of art as a concept, and the flowering of civilizations, the evolution of societies and the improvement of techniques led to an explosive and incredible evolution in artistic expression, and an enormous legacy that we, today, take care very badly. It is difficult for us to understand, now, in the 21st century, that art is a public good, not the exclusive property of a museum or a given collector. They are just guardians, sometimes temporary, of something that is much more universal and that should be cherished, valued and appreciated. And this reasoning also includes objects and buildings of historical and ethnographic value, archaeological remains and even documentary and archival funds. Not being art, together with it, they constitute a great cultural assemblage that is, in essence, our collective memory. As a historian, I am one of those who devote my life to studying, preserving, disseminating and caring for this memory.

This film, being a very light and funny comedy, shows very well the impact that art can have on someone's life, if we allow ourselves to be touched by it. The script, light and well written, brings together three museum security guards who, unhappy with the sale of their three favorite artworks to a Danish museum, decide to steal them before they are taken away. The plan involves replacing them with identical copies, and things, as is often the case in this type of film, will not go well without several funny incidents, and without the plan, on several occasions, r...