This movie was not something that I would usually watch on my own, but when I viewed a little trailer about the movie it sparked my interest a bit. It took a while for the movie to gain some traction into the main storyline. This was a downside to the movie because things were happening so slowly. In my opinion the movie has a few aspects of art. Photography was a main component because Diane carries a camera around to take her own pictures. She uses photography to capture the world around her. Her husband takes pictures professionally. I feel like photography around this time was popular and essential to the development of art history. Being able to capture the moment and save it like that was revolutionary. In addition, the movie has many unique pictures on walls of the stranger’s apartment that Diane really likes. She really wanted to take a portrait picture of the stranger because she found him unique. She found him unique because when she first saw the stranger, he was wearing a mask. When he took the mask off he was covered in thick hair.
The movie opens with Diane Arbus arriving at someone’s home where the people were nude. It looked like they were very comfortable in their own skin and tried to persuade Diane to do the same, but she declined it. Diane looked nervous but later we learn that she is more experimental than we thought. Later, in the movie we meet a couple more important characters. We meet Diane’s husband who is a photographer. He takes pictures that will sometimes get featured in magazines. Which is shown in a scene where the husband Allan lined up women who were ironing cloths for an advertisement. In the movie there was a scene where Diane was asked what her job was in relation to her husband. She ended up getting annoyed with the question because she could not think of anything to say. I think she felt like she was just living in her husband’s shadow the whole time. After that scene she looks out of a random window and sees this strange fellow moving into the apartment. This was important because it foreshadows an important character that will be part of her life in the end. The movie starts to pick up after that because Diane will end up finding a clue later in her bathroom that will lead her to this stranger.
As her relationship with her husband starts to fizzle out, she looks more and more to this stranger. After she finds a key in the bathroom she goes up to the top where the stranger lives to ask for a portrait picture of himself. Later on, she gets a whole lot more than the picture she originally intended to take. When she entered the stranger’s apartment the room was filled with art objects. There were paintings on the walls, fancy objects, and other little things that could be related to an art form. This is where we learn that the stranger himself is a form of art because he is not your average person. The stranger has thick hair all over his body from literal head to toe.
After this scene Diane starts to come around his apartment more and more but now with a camera. She takes pictures of so many objects and displays to really capture the whole apartment. In my opinion her doing this really helped me realize how much art was truly crammed into this small space. The reason I say this is because we all know that apartments in the city are known for being expensive and tiny. I feel like this movie really made sure that every square inch of that apartment had some sort of detail towards it. In the basement there was a unique piece of art work which was the stranger’s chair that he would use for shows. In the movie we learn that for a good amount of the stranger’s life he had to hide the fact that he was so hairy. He said that at 5am everyday before school he would shave his whole body so the kids at school would not make fun of him.
After watching this movie, I still come to the conclusion that there were only a few aspects of art history in this movie. We see a lot of art in the movie, but we don’t take a deeper look into the art as the movie goes on. I felt as if the movie was based more on a love scene than an art one. It also did not help that the movie was extremely slow to begin with. I think the overall goal of the movie was to show that art can be found in many different forms. All in all, I would not recommend this movie to another to watch if they are trying to learn aspects of Arbus’s career and work. If that person is just looking for an interesting movie to watch then I would recommend this movie.
