Fur:An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

There are probably quite a few photographers on APUG that rent movies from Netflix or other sources.

So I just thought I woulld give everyone a heads up about 'Fur:An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus'.

This movie stinks. Don't waste your money or your time.

You don't say!

I saw it last year, and I'm not sure whether this was more depressing than the breakup that I was going through at the same moment.

Some nice gear in the husband's studio, though (hassies, rolleis, etc.)

I saw it, in the theater. I didn't find it depressing or bad, per se, but it was very obviously a flight of fantasy regarding her life, not a legitimate biography. While I understand that the Arbus estate is very controlling of access to her work and her papers, and won't help anyone who is not trying to write a glowing paean to Diane as a "normal" person, I fail to see why this movie needed to be made. Without being able to factually re-tell her story,what's the point of a "fictional" biography? It's only slightly more historically accurate than "Inglorious Basterds", which at least had the benefit of being highly entertaining. This was just baffling.

TheFlyingCamera said:

I saw it, in the theater. I didn't find it depressing or bad, per se, but it was very obviously a flight of fantasy regarding her life, not a legitimate biography. While I understand that the Arbus estate is very controlling of access to her work and her papers, and won't help anyone who is not trying to write a glowing paean to Diane as a "normal" person, I fail to see why this movie needed to be made. Without being able to factually re-tell her story,what's the point of a "fictional" biography? It's only slightly more historically accurate than "Inglorious Basterds", which at least had the benefit of being highly entertaining. This was just baffling.

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Well being an Arbus aficionado I was baffled by the storyline of the movie. Or to put it another way if there had been a true life bio-pic made of Arbus it would have been more interesting for me, but the box office appeal would have probably been very small.

Never the less this movie was pretty much a looser whether or not we consider the imaginary story line, the movie just wasn't entertaining much less informative.

And oh yeah, how many times did Alan Arbus use the same flashbulb (looked like an M25B) without changing it? At least they got Diane's camera correct, but seeing her walk around in a nudist camp with a single bulb just pointed to one of the many technical flaws of the movie. A that point though it really didn't matter, the whole story line was pure fantasy. The names weren't changed but the facts certainly were.