Finding Vivian Maier (2014)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on April 19, 2014 @ tonymacklin.net.

Recently I was reminded of the value a critic can have when I received a passionate email from critic David Elliott.

David spent his career in Chicago and San Diego writing film reviews for major papers. He was with the San Diego Union-Tribune for 24 years. David is one of the most literate, insightful critics living.

But he's not employed any longer as movie critic. His papers folded or moved onward and downward.

However, once a cineaste, always a cineaste.

Elliott's email to a few friends/colleagues was in heartfelt support of a new documentary, Finding Vivian Maier. The film especially had appealed to his sense of Chicago, his love of photography, and his fervent commitment to documentaries.

I had Finding Vivian Maier on my list of movies to see, but David's enthusiasm bumped it up. And his personal appeal gave it added resonance.

Finding Vivian Maier is an intriguing study of Vivian Maier - a woman who was part artist and part dumpster diver.

Documentarian John Maloof went to an auction in Chicago in 2007 and bid for and bought a case. It turned out to contain a treasure trove of unpublished negatives from an unknown woman.

Maloof was more intrigued by the photographer than the photographs. Eventually he put up 200 images on a blog, and the response was unexpected and vast. It set Maloof off on an odyssey to explore who the obscure Vivian Maier was.

There was little information about her.

Maloof sought out the people who knew her. As he interviewed the people who had come in contact with her, the mystery deepened. They knew about the omnipresent camera that hung from her neck, but they knew nothing of her ability or talent. They had no idea of her import as a street photographer.

She was a nanny for various families. Some loved her; some experienced a dark side. At one point someone says that Vivian once said, "I'm difficult." But she was more than difficult. Maloof adds layers to this pungent onion.

Vivian Maier was Mary Poppins as the horrible hoarder. She was an amalgam of Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West. She was gregarious and invisible. She was a world traveller and a ghetto wanderer.

A bespectacled woman who employed Vivian says, "She sees the bizarreness of life. The incongruity of life. And the unappealingness of human beings."

An expert of photography says, "This is a genuine shooter." He adds, "She didn't defend herself as an artist. She just did the work."

Maloof co-directed and co-wrote Finding Vivian Maier with Charlie Siskel [Gene's nephew]. They leave some gaps. Why did she work for tv host Phil Donahue in Chicago as nanny for his children for "less than a year"?

At the end of Finding Vivan Maier, the credits list four "legal counsellors," plus two more additional legal individuals. Vivian would have bolted.

A man tells how he sat on a bench with her, near the end of her life. Vivian ate with relish from a can of cold corned beef hash.

It's a comment that reverberates.

Old critics never die. They just fade away.

David Elliott, please pass the hash.