FINDING VIVIAN MAIER – The Review

It’s documentary time again, film fans! Now stop that groaning this instant! As you are well aware (if you’re a regular visitor to this site) docs aren’t dry, dull homework. They can be more entertaining than many fiction films and big studio blockbusters. And they can incorporate other film genres like this year’s Best Documentary Oscar winner 20 FEET FROM STARDOM which was a musical doc. Opening today is FINDING VIVIAN MAIER which is an art/mystery/doc hybrid, much as another recent Oscar winner, SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN,  which was a musical mystery. Not familiar with the work of Ms. Maier? In the last few years she has been lauded as one of the great street photographers whose work equals the great Diane Arbus. But here’s why she’s just be recognized now. Maier spent most of her life working as a nanny or a maid, first in New York City, and later in the suburbs of Chicago. The film tells how the beginnings of her fame really started with an auction as a young man was looking for vintage Windy City shots for a project.

That man is the film’s co-writer and director John Maloof who made the winning bid on a box of old photo negatives. Although none of the images suited his project, he was stunned by the beauty of the work. Eventually he purchased more negatives that were sold to others at the auction. Maloof found letters and receipts that connected him to a former employer of Maier who was about to toss out the contents of her storage locker. After rescuing the boxes from a dumpster fate, Maloof went through the thousands of negatives in color and black and white snapped from the 1940’s through the 1970’s along with several 16mm and 8mm home movies. Of course in addition there were clothes, souvenirs, and dozens of audio cassettes. Maloof contacted several museums and galleries about printing from the negs, but was politely brushed off. And so he turned to the world-wide web and posted some of the photos to his blog. The response was staggering and soon he put together a show of prints at the Chicago Cultural Center, which drew a huge adoring audience. But Maloof wanted to know more about Maier and begins interviewing the many families she worked for (including many adults she had helped raise). His research takes him across the country and across the pond to Europe as he tries to trace her roots and “find” this gifted artist.

Maloof and collaborator Charlie Siskel make this journey a compelling tale. They keep the film moving at a brisk clip and elicit wonderful responses from their interview subjects. Maier’s charges and bosses have endless stories about this eccentric woman, but many still remain blithely unaware of her background, including a major TV celebrity. It seems that Maier kept her past hidden away much like her photo work. This may be best heard on an exchange between her and one of the kids recorded on an audio cassette (” So, tell us your name, child.” “But, what’s your name?” “I am the ‘mystery woman’!”). In one segment, even a state worker is frustrated when going through old census forms about the Maier family. Eventually the funny anecdotes give way to a portrait of a dark-natured soul. The “pack-rat” gives way to a obssessive hoarder. One of her charges even reveals incidents of abuse. The film is an excellent investigation of a woman thought to be just a simple-minded laborer and care-giver, but who is now known world-wide for her artistic endeavours. And in several shots, mixed up with the beautiful and grotesque, is the woman herself, reflected in mirrors and store fronts, usually wide-eyed, concentrating, observing and recording life all around her. We may not fully understand Maier by the film’s end, but we’re haunted by those unforgettable images of those captured ghosts from the distant past. I hope cinema and art fans find this fascinating film.

4.5 Out of 5

FINDING VIVIAN MAIER opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinemas