| Overall Grade: |
C |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
C+ |
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| Visuals: |
B |
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The Gap
by Maya (movies profile)
Apr 24, 2008
1
of
1 people found this review helpful
"...what I've always called the gap between intention and effect....Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it." ---Diane Arbus
And if you don't believe Diane Arbus, just ask the makers of the movie "Fur." I'm not sure what it was they intended (a grotesque twist on 'Beauty and the Beast' or 'Alice in Wonderland', or the stated imaginary biography of Arbus), but it certainly came out having very little if anything to do with the real life of one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. There's always a basic question with any historical film: How much liberty should you take with the facts in order to tell a good story? "Fur" turns that question on its head: It doesn't tell a good story at all; in fact, the story it chooses to tell doesn't come close to being as interesting as a straightforward bio of the real Diane Arbus would undoubtedly have been. Oh sure, the real Arbus probably never cheated on her husband with the upstairs dogfaced boy or stood back at the cabana while her newly shorn significant other took a final dip in the ocean of despair, but it's just probable that a singleminded, courageous and remarkably creative woman learning to express her art in the suffocating June Cleaver world of 1950's America might have been a real-life story worth telling.
Robert Downey is interesting as always, bringing intelligent soulfulness to his character; and Nicole Kidman manages to make the hypothetical Diane Arbus seem like a carefully understated young hausfrau whose motor is definitely running. But all those moviegoers who only know that DeLorean was a funny-looking time machine will in all likelihood never take the time to familiarize themselves with Arbus's remarkable vision. That gap--the one between the real Arbus and the one portrayed on the screen--is too large, too ironic and too tragic. |
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