Artists Taking Risks

gradyharp

The division of opinion in responses to FUR - AN IMAGINARY PORTRAIT OF DIANE ARBUS is a healthy one and it is reassuring to read so many fine views of the film's worth. Diane Arbus remains one of the more important artists of the 20th century, a woman who defied societal taboos and entered the world of the marginal people - fellow human beings whose genetic inheritances could be viewed as either curses or variations of normal. Without making judgments Arbus photographed little people and giants, people with less than four limbs, people with deformities both skeletal and flesh defined, people whose life styles influenced at times grotesque appearances: in the end the common denominator is 'people'. She was unafraid to observe and to capture nature's variations.

How this great artist transitioned from the ordinary life of the 'proper wife and mother' of the 1950s to the world of the bizarre has always been a story that begged to be told. In this film, loosely based on the biography by Patricia Bosworth as adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson, driven director Steven Shainberg strives to create a story that would explain the transition. It is only a story and to judge it as honest biography would be incorrect. It is fantasy and one that is a clever, if overdone, explanation for Arbus' choices she made in her private life and in her artistic life.

As Diane Arbus, Nicole Kidman once again inhabits the role of a very strange personality and does it so well that she manages to take us along the odd journey on which she embarks. Her nice but mundane husband Allan (Ty Burrell) allows her to explore the presence of a new tenant Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.), encouraging his frustrated wife to take up photography on her own rather than serving as his assistant for the fashion magazine images he grinds out. Lionel is covered with hair (hypertrichosis) and as a sideshow freak has many friends who have deformities. Arbus enters this world, loves the freedom of expression she has longed for, and in time falls in love with Lionel, leaving her family to enter completely the vision she has discovered (this is not a spoiler as the film opens with this information).

Yes, Shainberg can be criticized for excess and for pushing the boundaries of credibility, but for this viewer that approach enhances the concept of visualizing the epiphany in an artist's life when the world changes to a form the artist can then capture and share. The sets, photography, and the acting fit the idea - even the far too prolonged love scene/body shaving sequence and aftermath that can only be described as bizarre. The film is obviously a work of love and one that honors the life of Diane Arbus, even though we are not given much true information about the woman. Veteran actors Jane Alexander and Harry Yulin add to the dignity of the project, as does a fascinatingly simple musical score by Carter Burwell. This is a film for those who appreciate fantasy as a means of relating a history: for those who need factual biographical approach this film will not appeal. Grady Harp

score 8/10

gradyharp 11 May 2007

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1655435/