John Maloof and Charlie Siskel’s documentary has an opening both apt and witty: Talking heads, one after the other, struck dumb by the mystery at hand.
That would be Vivian Maier, an itinerant nanny who spent decades taking remarkable photographs, especially of Chicago and its urban denizens — then boxing up the negatives. Sometimes she never even developed the film. After her death in 2007, Maloof bought her effects at auction; without his random bid, she might still be unknown.
Unlike, say, Emily Dickinson, Maier was no recluse, yet no one suspected her snapshot habit hid an artist. The movie’s true power comes from her images, by turns melancholy, sympathetic, funny and sharp. As Maier wrote to one of the few film developers she trusted, “They’re not so bad, if I say so myself.”