Fur is an imaginary riff on the life of Diane Arbus, who has come to be known as a photographer of freaks. That description might be a bit caricatured, but that’s what it comes down to. A more charitable way of characterizing her work might be to suggest that she sought out people on the social fringes, people who gave flesh to her privately held sense of personal freakishness (she struggled with major depressive episodes and took her own life in 1971). Starring Nicole Kidman as Diane Arbus and Robert Downey, Jr. as Lionel, a neighbour/freak who suffers from hypertrichosis, the film explores the pivotal moment in her career when she shifts from dutiful assistant in her husband’s commercial studio to an explorer of dark places.
There is a key scene in the film when the audience realizes the marriage hasn’t got a chance; Diane must leave if she’s ever going to accomplish anything in her own right. Lionel has asked to meet her husband, so Diane invites him over for dinner. In the classic manner of a 50’s housewife, Diane toils in the kitchen while the two men share shots of 18 year old Macallan. Despite Lionel’s freakish appearance, Diane can’t look away. Meanwhile her husband makes small talk with Lionel but can barely bring himself to look at the man. One photographer looks with empathy; the other, with disgust. They pursue the same craft, but with different eyes and a different vision. It’s an object lesson for all photographers.
Another object lesson comes from the fact that Diane doesn’t photograph Lionel until she’s formed a relationship with him. This establishes a pattern the non-fictional Arbus followed throughout her career. We see it demonstrated at the end of the film. Diane approaches a woman in a nudist colony. The woman sees the Rolleiflex camera and asks if she’s going to take her picture. Diane sets the camera on the bench and says, “Yes, but not yet.”