By Farwa Ali          (January 30, 2025)

Graceful veined hands turn the seashell over a few times in reverent contemplation. A few moments later artist Ann Arnold tosses the seashell back into the rippling cerulean waves lapping against the shore of San Francisco’s Baker Beach. It has completed its journey, traveling from the ocean into Arnold’s life; where she has acknowledged its value, captured its luminous existence in her painting, and respectfully returned it to the ocean from whence it emerged. Wrestling The Angel – an Artist’s Passage, does more than capture Arnold’s artistic journey.

The new documentary film, a tender exploration of survival and art by Bay Area filmmakers Jonathan Villet and Fiona McDougall, invites the viewer to celebrate the serendipitous luminosity found in the mundane, especially while weathering life’s storms. It shines a spotlight on Arnold, a much loved and respected Berkeley fine art painter, whose journey through cancer presents a powerful narrative about resilience, gratitude, and the meaning of creativity in an ephemeral world.

Drawn to stories that reveal the strength and beauty of the human spirit, Villet and McDougall decided to film Wrestling the Angel shortly after Arnold received a cancer diagnosis in 2022. Arnold’s deep and almost spiritual connection to her art and the use of her creativity to process her experiences provide a compelling narrative. A profile in courage and grace, Arnold’s narrative focuses not only on the process of overcoming life’s challenges but, more importantly, on finding beauty and meaning amidst the chaos. Arnold’s still-life paintings and her fable-inspired ceramic tile work characterized by a magical luminosity reflect this nuanced approach. Art historian Lynne Ambrosini wrote, “After watching Wrestling the Angel, I felt refreshed, as though I had just dipped into a pure blue lake of wisdom and beauty.” Her choice of colors, form, and layering create art that is simultaneously uplifting, pristine, and playful.

“Capturing this luminosity on film was particularly challenging,” said McDougall. In order to do so successfully, she recalls having to repeatedly fine tune the light calibrations. Still, it was not the only challenge.

Besides exploring and capturing Ann’s creative process, the film became charged with existential weight. It tracks Arnold’s “sensibility” and spirit before, during, and after treatment as life’s complexities unfold, weaving a metaphor of Jacob wrestling the angel. Villet’s poignant script and editing complements his wife’s cinematic techniques. Together, they portray how Arnold, much like Jacob, battles her own “angel”, the ethereal force that challenged her sense of self and wellbeing. The film’s title is a nod to Arnold’s love for Aesop’s fables, biblical narratives, and Greek mythology, which inspire both her art and her life.  Wrestling the Angel is not a cancer documentary emphasizes Fiona. Instead, it conveys how an artistic mind faces mortality, embraces the present, as well as the gifts from life. Delectable figs, fuzzy red blush apricots, ripe cucumbers, rosy apples, juicy pears, sesame seed covered artisan bread, ripe melons, soft cheese, organic eggs, vintage teapots and butter knives, good friends, weathered seashells…. Arnold discusses a fresh appreciation for the daily gifts of life. Ann’s son Aldo teases that he lives in an “artist’s encampment” given his mother’s gift at creating art all over the house.

We see the playful, watercolor side of her work in her illustrations for the books she has made about the daughter of Alice Waters, founder of the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse. In imagined scenes of French country life, Fanny in France conveys the delights of food and childhood in colorful, compact vignettes as well as lively, detailed double-page picnic scenes. After watching the documentary, Alice Waters observed: “This film captures Ann in her element, speaking eloquently, and plainly, about many of the values she and I both share – beauty, simplicity, a love of nature, a love of food!”

The book projects Arnold completed with her husband, antiquarian bookseller Ian Jackson who died in 2018, convey a sophisticated humor. In an alphabet for the children of friends the letter ‘B’ unexpectedly stands for barbed wire and ‘C’ for Cleopatra, a wanton, wasteful girl “dissolving in a glass of wine a valuable pearl.” Wrestling the Angel takes Arnold’s skill at collaboration to a whole new level, especially in the film’s two segments of animation in which Arnold’s illustrations and storytelling are woven together by the filmmakers’ ideas for the storyboard and music, and the animator, David Gonzales of Zap Media Productions’ brilliant assembling. Villet and McDougall’s decision to animate Arnold’s artwork for The Ants and The Grasshopper was a hit with the audience at the test screening. Like most viewers, Shanza Sayed who attended the screening was fascinated by the animation but was moved by Arnold’s empathetic interpretation of the life choices of the grasshopper even more.

A hidden gem in the art world, Arnold has not chased after commercial success, choosing instead to let her work speak for itself. “I could have either chosen to be at all the shows, or use that time to paint and create. I chose the latter,” reveals Arnold. Befittingly, the seashell scene, embodies her unique perspective on the creative process called life and consequently, mortality. Early on, Ann is shown studying and painting the shell in her studio, its tiny ridges and the delicate swirl of its spiral, and ultimately its return to the ocean. “The seashell is in many ways emblematic of the dark mystery and transient nature of life. Its beauty lies in its impermanence,” observes Villet.  The multilayered symbolism is not lost on the audience: once a living creature, now empty with life’s occupant gone. Yet the shell remains an artifact of beauty that Arnold honors through her painting. She then lets it go, acknowledging its impermanence even as she relinquishes any control over whatever fate has in store. Villet points out that scenes like this allow the audience to resonate emotionally with the subject on a deeper level.

The cinematic challenge of connecting their audiences with the subject is a feat Villet and McDougall have accomplished many times before. Their film Finding Snow White was semifinalist at the San Francisco Arthouse Short Festival 2022, official selection at the Paris Women Festival 2022, Sonoma Film Festival, and Berlin Shorts Award 2022. The film shines a light on the astonishing journey of Ditta Oliker whose teenage son was murdered. Instead of succumbing to self-pity and grief, Oliker returns to school and becomes a PhD psychotherapist at 50, practices to age 91 and in the decades of her practice inspires, among others, the boyhood friend of her son, by unveiling a deeper meaning of the Snow White fairy tale. Through her words and practice she reveals how people can achieve their true potential by rising above their challenges in order to break free from the shackles of their past. The couple’s 2023 film concept How Dare the Angels Sing, a work in progress seeking funding, reveals the story of how 90 years after Nazis murder a Jewish composer, his previously lost opera is discovered in a San Francisco attic and then premieres in Germany in 2022, mirroring the composer’s own tragic kismet with the subject of his own opera, a woman persecuted in the 1600s. Through this story, Villet and McDougall invite the audience to ponder upon how art triumphs over mass hatred to preserve humanity while cautioning against the risks of persistent “othering and dehumanization” in the modern era.

Before venturing into documentary filmmaking, the couple who married in 1984 built their reputation and skillset in producing communication for public benefit programs. Villet’s work with the United Nations, and McDougall’s career as a photojournalist took them to Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Italy, and other places. While Villet designed campaigns for semi-nomadic and rural communities in Africa, attracting people to critical improvements such as cattle vaccination, environmental preservation, and more, McDougall photographed for international media outlets such as The New York Times. Her coverage of the civil war in Somalia earned her a Pulitzer nomination. The sum of their experience led them to found OneWorld Communications, a media and digital agency, in 1998 as they aimed to serve as a communication bridge between the government agencies, nonprofits, and the communities they served. The subjects of their highly diverse projects range from wildlife conservation to assisting people with a disability which opened the door to McDougall’s 2011 collaborative production Living Between Sound and Silence, a 15-minute documentary that draws the viewer into a world where deaf and hearing cultures intersect, and where families represent the conflicts and resolutions of divergent experiences. Through their company, Villet and McDougall have put together an impressive portfolio of commissioned and self-generated productions.

Since its inception, OneWorld Communication has focused on harnessing the “power of good communication” to help people improve their lives. Decades of conveying empowering storylines to diverse audiences prepared Villet and McDougall for a transition into filmmaking. The transition felt both exciting and daunting, yet “natural.”  McDougall admits that transitioning from still images to the moving image was challenging but they were both driven by the fact that documentary storytelling would allow them to convey deeper emotions through tales of human triumph in the face of adversity. Weaving a creative synergy, the duo divides tasks affably. Villet the wordsmith handles writing, interviews, editing, and chases the elusive story arcs while McDougall oversees the cinematography. “Fortunately, we have different but complementary skill sets,” remarks Villet.

The couple’s creative synergy proved vital in filming Wrestling the Angel, an intimate and sensitive subject where they trained their lenses on Arnold’s much admired ‘sensibility’ as she addressed her cancer as ushering out a houseguest who had overstayed their welcome. Even though Wrestling the Angel contends with the burden of mortal crisis, the film maintains an uplifting tone and positive message. Arnold’s life lessons and humor, Fiona’s crisp cinematography, and Villet’s empathetic storytelling play out against the backdrop of Arnold’s bright cheerful art studio stacked to the ceiling with books and works of art. She likens her slow, cautious sweeps of the broom to her long journey of healing. “It’s like house-keeping, literally just sweeping the illness away and permitting the small everyday things to ground us when life is uncertain.”

Arnold’s simple yet powerful approach to life has influenced Villet and McDougall as well. McDougall admits that prior to filming Wrestling the Angel, she never gave much thought to fables. “I did not realize how these old tales can guide our lives or help us interpret experiences.” Thanks to Arnold, she now does. For Arnold, the biblical tale of Jacob wrestling the angel is a potent metaphor for confronting the unknown. The cancer, like the angel, arrives suddenly and leaves Jacob limping yet transformed at his core. Arnold, too, carries a limp of sorts, a transformed perspective, and a transformed body that she hopes ‘swept away’ an unwanted guest. She pensively observes that “one may not comprehend the meaning or reason while in the midst of the battle, but it unfolds in time.”

Villet recalls the moment he comprehended the vision and “need” to create Wrestling the Angel. One day, while discussing art, Arnold captivated him by retelling Jacob’s story, describing the biblical story as if it were part of her own creative process. The filmmaker realized he was “watching a bigger metaphor unfold. One about the significance of being ‘crippled’ by the angel but also blessed.” And just like that, a vision of the film crystallized. Viewers unfamiliar with documentaries or with a certain mindset about what a documentary should be are in for a cinematic treat. This poetic film combines candid realism with playful reenactments while shining a light on Arnold’s rich life and art career while meandering through philosophical tangents about Jacob and his angel. Central to Wrestling the Angel is the question: how does one, in this case the artist, face mortality? Reflecting the everyday beauty she finds all around her, Arnold’s answer is subtle but profound: one brushstroke at a time, one conversation at a time, one seashell at a time.

While Villet and McDougall do a tremendous job of creating this cinematic masterpiece, they leave it to the viewers to provide deeper exegesis. Wrestling the Angel has been submitted for consideration at various film festivals. The test screening in Berkeley is proof that the film resonates deeply with viewers, who shed tears, expressed gratitude, and admitted to wrestling the angel in their own lives. And that was a mission accomplished for Villet and McDougall. The film is able to inspire people to ponder their own lives, navigate their challenges, but slow down while doing so to appreciate life’s hidden marvels. “Wrestling the Angel” need not be a stressful or morbid task. All one requires is an open heart and a willingness to find meaning amidst life’s fragility.

 

Note: If you would like to watch Wrestling the Angel please sign up at http://www.WrestlingAngel.com/ to be notified about future screenings in your area and how you can help the film find audiences.

Follow the film on Facebook and Instagram.

Follow Ann Arnold and see more of her artwork on Instagram and Facebook.

Read her article “Painting and Illustrating” about what motivates Ann.

Check the Stinehour Editions page for more paintings and books.

All artwork in this article is copyrighted © Ann Arnold.

 

Farwa Ali is a Bay Area based independent journalist and researcher. She is the author of articles on subjects ranging from the rights of the native peoples of the Andaman Islands to a brilliant young Indian chemist from Texas and her groundbreaking discoveries in virology during the Covid pandemic. She writes about American and international politics, human rights, and the role of Indians in American society for The Week, The New Indian Express, and other publications. Her groundbreaking chapter on Gandhi, charting the influence and impact of his acceptance and rejection by the Muslim press, was recently published in the volume Gandhi: Advocacy Journalism and the Media. She holds a Masters degree in Communication & Journalism from the University of Madras and Global Security Studies from Johns Hopkins University.