For four decades, an unassuming woman in a heavy, shapeless coat walked Chicago's diverse neighborhoods and snapped photos, often while pushing a stroller or dragging along a middle-schooler or two. Vivian Maier made her living as a nanny in the 1950s through the ’90s, but caring for children was merely her public profession. Privately, she was pursuing an astounding artistic life as a street photographer. As she once coyly confessed to a rare confidant: “I'm sort of a spy.” Maier took over 100,000 photos depicting everyday people and scenes, capturing midcentury American life at its most unguarded, absurd, and poignant.
However, Maier's work was created for her eyes only. Comprising countless negatives, recordings, films, and rolls of undeveloped film crammed into boxes, it was virtually unseen prior to her death in 2009. That changed when historian John Maloof happened upon a lot of Maier's possessions at an auction, and subsequently brought her artistry into the sunlight. Maloof and producer Charlie Siskel have collaborated to direct Finding Vivian Maier, a documentary feature exploring the photographer's remarkable story.
As with many biopics about extraordinary people, Finding Vivian Maier neglects any sort of formal liveliness, relying to a significant extent on the inherent allure of its subject to maintain the viewer's interest. To their credit, however, Maloof and Siskel quickly dispense with the feel-good miracle of Maier's posthumous recognition and get about the business of uncovering the woman's strange and often sad story. Poring over her effects for stray clues and tracking down the now-grown children she cared for, the filmmakers delve into Maier's mysterious history, and the less savory aspects of her personality and eventual fate. It unsurprisingly skims over the ethics of interpreting a deceased artist's intentions, but Finding Vivian Maier ultimately assembles a portrait that is both absorbing and riven with discomfiting contradictions.
