This is one of those documentaries that suckers you in thinking its going to be just run of the mill sad and then sucker punches you with a hammerfist of crazy. John Maloof was just looking for some old pictures of Chicago when he bought a box of junk at an auction. What he found was a thousand negatives taken with such skill, he went looking for information on the artist behind them. Starting with a scrap of paper bearing the name Vivian Maier, Maloof fell down a rabbit hole, uncovering the life of an extraordinary and impossibly secretive woman. Vivian Maier never married, never spoke about her family, and never encouraged anyone to pry into her life. She worked as a nanny through the 1970's and 80's, but each family had a completely different impression of her. Some said she was warm and open and liked to be called Viv, others said that she was borderline abusive and wouldn't respond to anything but Ms. Maier. She used aliases at shops for no apparent reason. She hoarded newspapers and tchotchkes. She also took thousands upon thousands of beautiful photographs, revealing an incredible talent for capturing light and shadow on people's faces.
I was completely sucked in by the mystery of what the hell happened in this woman's life to make her so incapable of connecting with other people except through a camera lens. The documentary doesn't really have answers, since Vivian Maier died and left no one to confirm anything about her, but really what else is there to know that can't be gleaned from her body of work? John Maloof had already found her when he looked at her pictures and appreciated them. There's her soul. The rest is just history.
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