On the Big Board |
Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
126/200 |
Max Braden |
The connection between Kidman and Downey Jr. feels real, but the movie drags and Downey's demeanor is overly quiet and delicate. |
"Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." Such is the justification an artist once made for an entire body of work.
Her given name was Diane Nemerov though the world would come to know her as Diane Arbus. Her life would start ordinarily enough. She received a normal education albeit at a private school for girls. Maybe this forced separation from the opposite sex made her a bit boy crazy. She married very young at 18; the man was Allan Arbus, a boy she had fallen in love with at the age of 14. As soon as she was of legal age, the two began their life together.
It was the accidental impact of world war that changed both their lives. While stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Allan Arbus learned a new craft. At the Signal Corps, he was taught photography. Excited by the new discovery, the newlywed shared his learning with his bride. So passionate were the two of them about this industry that they made it their profession. For 15 years, they worked together as fashion photographers.
Alas, the romance between Allan and Diane Arbus was not eternal. She went out on her own professionally in 1957. Two years later, the marriage ended as well. At the age of 36, Diane Arbus found herself single and searching to find her real voice as an artist.
While enrolled at the New School for Social Research, Arbus met an Austrian named Lisette Model. The photographer was considered an outsider in mainstream circles, because she took intentionally unflattering pictures of French aristocrats. The idea was deeply impacting to Arbus. She began to focus her photography upon capturing the freaks of life. Anyone deformed or handicapped in some way was someone Arbus would consider immortalizing. She became one of the most celebrated and controversial outsider artists of the 1960s due to this behavior.
Obviously, Diane Arbus had an unusual world view. As she continued to celebrate the odd people of life, she grew more unstable. Her final years were spent photographing instutionalized women. In the end, Arbus could no longer handle the misfortunes of fate. She ended her own life in 1971.
Nicole Kidman knows multifaceted characters when she sees them. That is why she was naturally drawn to play Diane Arbus in the upcoming biopic, Fur. The film, based upon the novel Diane Arbus: a Biography by patricia Bosworth, reunites the Secretary writer/director team. Steven Shainberg will helm the project using an adapted screenplay from Erin Cressida Williams. (David Mumpower/BOP)
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