Customer Reviews

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait Of Diane Arbus

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

I didn't realize, when I went to see this film, that the director
was also responsible for "Secretary", but in retrospect this makes
perfect sense. Both films concern themselves with the twisted side
of humanity, or perhaps, the humanity of kink. "Fur" chronicles the
imaginary but convincing awakening of Diane Arbus to her true
fascination with the grotesque. Frustrated and oppressed by her
life as a vanilla 1950's housewife, Diane yearns for something more.
She sees the bizarre and disturbing details in her surroundings that
others miss, but thus far has not had the courage to record her
observations.

When she catches a glimpse of Lionel (Robert Downney Jr.), completely
masked, she somehow recognizes him as the key to escaping her
suffocating life. He sends her the key to his apartment, through
the sewer pipes, an apt metaphor. Hesitant at first, then exuberant,
she surrenders to her true self, the beautiful, poised woman
surrounded by dwarves and siamese twins who is nevertheless, in
Lionel's words, a "real freak". For Diane, this is badge of
honor.

Diane's fascination with the bizarre, and with Lionel, is intensely
sexual. The tension between the two protagonists is maintained
through the film, gradually turning to desperate longing.
Yet they hardly touch. Their inevitable coupling near the
end of the film seems anti-climatic. The real climax is the
terribly intimate and prolonged scene in which Diane shaves
Lionel's entire body.

I'll agree with other reviewers that the ending of the film
falters. Nevertheless, this movie touched me deeply, and I
recommend it highly.

Nicole Kidman has made some brave career choices; some of these choices were both brave and bad ("Birth"), some were just bad ("Bewitched", "Dogville"). She is clearly an actress willing to take a chance and occasionally, these pay off, providing a delightful, entertaining, unusual experience for the viewer. "Fur", her new film directed by Steven Shainberg ("Secretary"), is not the best film she has ever been in and it isn't the worse.

The late 50s. Diane Arbus (Kidman) lives with her husband, Allan (Ty Burrell), and their two daughters, in a large apartment in New York. They have converted part of the apartment into a photography studio and make a handsome living shooting covers for Vogue and ads for her father's (Harris Yulin) fur shops. But Diane is unhappy and feels that her life is unfulfilled. She no longer finds joy helping load her husband's camera, or fixing one of the model's outfits. Allan suggests she take some time off, shoot some photos of her own. One night, she overhears a new neighbor moving in upstairs. Peering out the window, she spots the new tenant, Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.), paying the movers. She is intrigued; Lionel is covered from head to toe in clothing, a crocheted mask covering his face and head. She soon ventures up to his apartment and learns he is covered from head to toe in long hair, fur. Lionel intrigues her and introduces her to a variety of strange people she would never have otherwise met; midgets, giants, people with no arms, Siamese twins, and others you would have to go to the sideshow attractions at a circus to meet, at least during this period. She begins to feel more comfortable around these people, and grows more distant from her husband and children.

"Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus", directed by Steven Shainberg, is an interesting, highly stylized portrait of perhaps one of the most enigmatic figures in modern art. Very little is known about the photographer; she didn't talk about herself much and there seems to be a cone of silence around her as little has been said by any family member or friend. So Shainberg, and his screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, working from a book by Patricia Bosworth, have fashioned a tale out what they were able to find out and attempt to paint a portrait of the influences that would shape what her photographs would become.

This is an interesting idea and helps to provide some idea of the photographer's life. Lionel is, apparently, completely fictional, and proves as a sort of mentor, introducing her to people and things outside of her comfort zone, taking her out of her upper class New York world and showing her the type of people who would become her subjects.

Kidman's portrayal of Arbus is very quiet. She goes from housewife and studio assistant, confused about her life, to a more adventurous woman, but still confused about her life. As she becomes more familiar with Lionel, and the people who inhabit his world, her eyes open wider, her smile grows, she seems to become alive. Yet, she also realizes she is drawing further and further away from her husband and children. How can she reconcile the two worlds? She can't, and she has to make a decision.

Robert Downey Jr. also plays it quiet. He never speaks above a murmur and it is all but impossible to see his facial expressions throughout, as he is covered with fur. As they grow closer, he becomes more involved in her life, more interested in helping her push her boundaries.

The idea of painting a portrait of an artist, imagining what their influences were, is probably not far from what most artist biopics actually accomplish. How can we know what was going through Picasso's (Anthony Hopkins) head as he painted in "Surviving Picasso"? How can we know what inspired painter Vermeer (Colin Firth) "The Girl With The Pearl Earring"? We can't, unless they happened to keep detailed journals, and most artists used the canvas as their journal. So, while "Surviving Picasso" and "The Girl With A Pearl Earring" don't purport to be biographies of the artist's life, they do try to paint a portrait of these people at work, during specific periods, using real people in their life as characters in the films. "Fur" is not all that different. With the exception of Lionel, most of the film appears to be culled from what little detail could be learned about the enigmatic photographer's life. The character of Lionel was created as a passport into her life and her world. There is a significant amount of dramatic license used in both types of films, but in "Fur", the license is overt.

Director Shainberg seems to have a lot of fun depicting the oddball look of New York in the 50s. The guests at a party at the Arbus house and studio seem like they are desperate for any moment of fun, desperate for a laugh, everyone of them smoking, because it is the fashionable thing to do. At one point, Allan is composing the models for an ad and we see a look at what the finished ad might look like and it brilliantly evokes the advertising of this age, six almost identical women, each standing behind an ironing board, each wearing the same clothing, but in different primary colors. Then, as Diane becomes more involved in Lionel's world, the décor has a more hand me down look, as though everything was purchased at a flea market or garage sale.

While the film is interesting to watch, a certain fairy tale quality is pervasive, the reason behind the central relationship is vague and unsatisfying. I get that Diane is intrigued by Lionel, but the reason for the unhappiness with her husband and her marriage is never really explained. She has a breakdown, but why? Late in the film, she spends a significant amount of time shaving Lionel, revealing the man beneath, essentially erasing the very thing she was attracted to in the first place. "Fur" can't seem to decide what it wants to say about Diane Arbus' feelings.

And because feelings are such a huge part of the make-up of most artists, "Fur" doesn't reveal enough.

From reading reviews here at Amazon and speaking to other movie goers, I've come to the conclusion that this is one of those films where depending on the personality/likes/dislikes of the viewer, you'll either love it or hate it. I personally loved it. Loved the acting of the entire cast, loved the costuming, directing, make-up and cinematography.
I love a great love story. Please note, that the title clearly states that this is "An IMAGINARY Portrait of Diane Arbus". Perhaps another film maker wants to tackle a different, more true-to-life version at some point in the future, but in this particular take of her life, the real Diane serves mearly as a loosly based mold for the Diane of this film.
For me personally, this was one of those films that stuck with me for days after I saw it at the theater. I thought it was brilliant! It reminded me a bit of the '80's T.V. show "Beaty and the Beast".

My suggestion? Rent this before you buy it. If you love it, you'll watch it again and again and will definetly want to purchase it.

"Fur" takes the fascinating subject of Diane Arbus and trashes it. Ignoring Patricia Bosworth's 1984 biography, director Steven Shainberg and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson opt for a pretentious fictional approach. With a running time of 122 minutes, "Fur" goes nowhere very slowly. Nicole Kidman's fine performance as the influential photographer deserves a much better film.

This film made me sad at the squandered opportunity to have shared with a new generation and a larger audience an immense American talent in visual art through the medium of photography. Rather than grapple with a complex woman in a transitional cultural time for both women and the arts, we are given this water color of a woman, dropped in the middle of a Tod Browning carnival of 'Freaks,' trivializing Arbus' groundbreaking sense of vision and boundary-challenging subject matter. What a terrific actress like Nicole Kidman could have done in bringing us the raw, authentic artist and woman had she not signed on to this 'imaginary portrait.'

I would 1st of all change the title to "HAIR or The Inner World of Diane Arbus". I think the title, FUR may have left a bunch of people out. The film is SPECTACULAR! Simply AMAZING! Rich in Detail and the inner life, inspiration and passion of a human being. Anyone who judges this film from a biographical perspective or a realistic point of view will be disappointed - but this film surpasses all of that! In delves into a RICH, DEEPER world of the heart of the artist in all of us! Nicole Kidman, as always, delivers 100%, along with the subtle, gentle and elegant acting from Robert Downey Jr. Ty Burrell is truly and fully captivating as the husband who no longer has emotions to fulfill his wife. Steven's directing is mesmerizing, filled with brilliant detail, structured continuity and encompassing all of the human senses.

This movie is really quite unfortunate. Diane Arbus was a fascinating woman and her life should have gotten the treatment it deserved. They had been debating for years about how best to approach this... what won out was probably the worst idea. It is fictional and only loosely based on her amazing life. It is pretty insulting to her memory. The fictional allegorical love affair with her upstairs neighbor is kind of insulting for it portrays her as a naive woman needing a masculine figure to bring out her artistic notions. The character itself pays homage to Lionel the Lion-Faced man and imagines a meeting/romance. They even change her kid's names for no reason. I hope another film does it right.

When the Greeks started acting in the first plays their dramas were considered to be an imitation of life ("mimesis"), and there was no pretense that the stories they were telling were what really happened. This explains why all the great tragic playwrights have their own versions of the slaying of Clytemnestra. Today we find that Hollywood lawyers have boilerplated into the end credits of every film the bald faced declaration that any everything is fictitious and any resemblance to actual people, places, animals, vegetables or minerals is purely coincidental, even when they are "real" people, places, etc. That makes it rather interesting that at the beginning of "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus," there is an additional caveat as we are told: "Unlike a conventional biography, this film takes the bold step of merging reality and fantasy to explore the emergence of a singularly brilliant artist and great American photographer Diane Arbus."

Actually, there are so many warnings about how this 2006 film is not even remotely close to being a true story that I found myself wondering if it even should have been about Diane Arbus. If you do not know who Arbus was you might feel yourself to be at a disadvantage in watching this film, but really all you need to know about the real person is that her first name was pronounced "Dee-ann," that she made her reputation taking black & white photographs of people who would most charitably be described as living on the fringe of American society, and that she committed suicide in 1971 at the age of 48 by swallowing a whole lot of barbiturates and then cutting her wrists open. What happens in this film has everything and nothing to do with any of that, so you are free to make of the proceedings what you will.

Nicole Kidman plays Diane, who finds little fulfillment in being the both wife and assistant to her husband Allan (Ty Burrell) and does not appear to be comfortable as a mother to her children or a daughter to her parents (Harris Yullin, Jane Alexander) either. Finding a giant wad of hair and a key in her water pipe, Arbus assumes that the new neighbor upstairs has been trimming the hair of his dog and letting it go down the drain. This turns out not to be the case as we learn why Lionel Sweeney, played by Robert Downey Jr., walks around in a variety of exotic masks. My first thought actually was of Fedor Jeftichew, better known as Jo-Jo the Dog-Face Boy (later Jo-Jo the Dog-Face Man), and then the movie that immediately came to mind was Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et la bête." But I understand that younger viewers with less eclectic interests would immediately think Chewbacca from "Star Wars."

"Fur" is described as "a startling combination of fairytale, psychological study, period piece and love story," and it is hard to argue with that list. Once you buy into the idea that this story is totally invented concerning a period of her life of which little is known (assuming you are willing to do so), you can just go along for the ride. The idea here is to tell the story of Diane Arbus' first photograph and to come up with a first subject who would be emblematic of all the other photographs to come. Arbus' photographs have been described as being like "Alice in Wonderland" for adults, and Fur embraces that idea from start to finish, but the fantastic elements become secondary as soon as the connection between Diane and Lionel is established.

More than the life of Diane Arbus my reference point for this film was really the fact that director Steven Shainberg and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson previously worked together on "Secretary." That kinky little film is actually and surprisingly one of my favorite love stories of recent years, and I see "Fur" as being very much in the same key, what with love overcoming decidedly different barriers through the efforts of a strong tandem of actor and actresse (James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal in that case). Reducing Downey to acting primarily with just his eyes and his voice only serves to remind us of how good he is and why I have never had the animosity towards him that I frequently direct against public figures engaging in self-destructive behavior. Both Downey and Kidman play it small in this film in order to create something large but still fragile. Like the photographs of Diane Arbus, this movie combines things that are beautiful and disturbing. This will not sit well with everyone, which is utterly appropriate.

"Beauty and the beast" by a director that wants to be David Lynch. Human beings don't act like human beings. It's all about a sense of weirdness, and any resemblance to the historical Diane Arbus is entirely coincidental. And that's a pity because her life was interesting

Fur is an interesting film, a bit slow as most of the critical action is happening within Diane Arbus' head. It's very hard to show the inner working of someone's thought process, but Nicole Kidman gives an edgy performance as the woman pulled in a direction that breaks the mold of safe homemaker, wife & mother from the 1950s.

The revelation for me was the breathtaking performance of Ty Burrell. He was in "Black Hawk Down" but has never been on my radar screen as an actor. The obvious care & love he has for his wife as he watches her drift farther and farther away from him is excellently played. In the scene at the birthday party where he gives his toast, his eyes literally ache with emotion as he declares how much he loves his wife in front of a crowd of guests. It is the star performance of the film.

The other amazing cameo has to be Boris McGiver as Jack Henry @ the nudist colony. If ever an actor showed that he was willing to do whatever it takes, he fearlessly shows all of his assets while cracking jokes. McGiver has previously appeared in "The Pink Panther" & 6 episodes of "The Wire." Marceline Hugot as his wife Tippa Henry also bravely goes where few heavy-set women would care to be seen in total.

Robert Downey Jr. does a good job as the hairy upstairs neighbor Lionel Sweeney. Although I understood the plot point, I never really got what attracted Diane to Lionel. Was it pity? Danger? Oddity? Love? So this key relationship didn't work as well for me in the film.

Jane Alexander does a journeyman's job in her cameo as Diane's mother, socialite Gertrude Nemerov.

Other than the peep show appeal, this film is a very interesting albeit slow-moving character study. Nicole Kidman is well worth watching. Enjoy!