When Albert Maysles died on March 5, it was the end of a significant phase of the documentary film. His movies, many of them made with his late brother David, helped create a new kind of nonfiction storytelling: Gimme Shelter set the standard for the rock-and-roll picture and defined the end of the ’60s; and Grey Gardens, a portrait of two crackpot relatives of Jackie Kennedy, remains a cult movie to this day. (It’s still a useful conversation piece about the place where observation and exploitation cross paths.)
What was this documentary giant working on at the end? He has at least one more film yet to be released, but among his final projects was the somewhat unexpected but very entertaining Iris. It’s a profile of Iris Apfel, a nonagenarian fashion legend and colorful collector (and wearer) of baubles, bangles, and beads. (The soundtrack of the movie is accompanied by the clacking of Iris’ Bundt-cake-sized bracelets.) If this seems a fluffy subject for Maysles, perhaps the comparison with Grey Gardens is useful: zany ladies, full of opinions, dressed to kill. And yet the subjects of the two films don’t compare; where the Beale women of GG had long since parted ways with common sense, the outrageous-looking Iris is resplendent with it. She goes to thrift stores and haggles over already-inexpensive merchandise; she shrugs at the idea of criticizing the fashion choices of others. (“Who am I to tell them how to look?”) She’s had a happy marriage—hubby Carl turns 100 during filming—and the Apfels ran a successful business for decades, manufacturing classic textile designs for clients including the White House.
Some people love Grey Gardens because the Beales remain defiantly themselves, despite their creepy existence in a decaying mansion. Iris takes up the same theme, but with a happier outcome. Yes, Iris and Carl are eccentric—their Palm Beach home is so crammed with toys and doo-dads that one expects them to start feeding the raccoons in the attic—but brimming with self-possession. We watch Iris travel, pose for magazine layouts, and then honestly describe the toll these activities take on someone in her early 90s. Despite the gaudy accessories, this isn’t fantasy-land.
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IRIS Opens Thurs., May 7 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian (and Fri. at Sundance). Rated PG-13. 78 minutes.
