High & Low: John Galliano
John Galliano’s racism and anti-Semitism renders Kevin Macdonald’s documentary of the fashion designer uneasy viewing.
As part of a wide-ranging career Kevin Macdonald has become recognised as a distinguished documentarian but his latest work in that genre strikes me as an ill-judged choice. By deciding to focus on the fashion designer John Galliano he immediately faced a challenge: how to handle the collapse of Galliano's career in 2011 when drunken remarks of a deeply anti-Semitic nature made in a Paris café led to a court case and a verdict of guilty. In theory it might have been possible to eschew a full-scale biopic and to concentrate on what happened to Galliano in 2011. But in that case in order to achieve a feature-length film it would probably have been necessary to bring in other comparable cases or else to widen out discussions on such issues as whether or not the phrase ‘in vino veritas’ is seen by experts (be they doctors or psychiatrists) as true or false. However, it is easy to believe that to obtain the full cooperation of John Galliano himself such possibilities had to be ruled out.
In the event High & Low: John Galliano offers a full biography, but it immediately recognises the elephant in the room by showing at the outset the actual footage in which Galliano’s racist remarks were caught on camera. However, that does not solve the problem because for more than an hour thereafter the film blandly proceeds with a chronological view of Galliano’s life just as though that opening material had not been seen. What we have here at this stage is very much a documentary in standard form, one that blends Galliano’s remarks about his life (these made to Macdonald who acts as an offscreen interviewer) with much readily available archive material. Proceeding in this way leads to two drawbacks. First of all, one cannot forget and put out of mind that opening material and yet the film is at this stage describing Galliano’s rise to fame in a manner which would seem entirely apt were Galliano somebody to be admired. Secondly, the film twice refers in passing to another notable fashion designer of the period, Alexander McQueen, and a comparison between this piece and the outstanding 2018 documentary McQueen made by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui underlines the fact that it had a far wider appeal than this film does. For one thing, in spite of his failings McQueen was a far more sympathetic figure than Galliano and that film’s portrait was handled with such depth and insight that it was easy to recommend McQueen even to audiences who had no interest at all in fashion. Here, in contrast, one feels that the first half of Macdonald's film very much requires a passionate interest in fashion on the part of the viewer if it is to make any real impact. The many contributors are not slow to hail him as a genius but unless you are a committed admirer of his designs there is nothing here to draw you in strongly.
The last third of Macdonald's film remains chronological and leads up to Galliano being allowed back to resume his career, albeit now not with Dior but with Maison Margiela. Indeed a 2022 show for them, "Cinema Inferno”, is featured in the film’s last scene although it's a display that still leaves me for one unimpressed. But nevertheless, this part of the film does indeed focus principally on whether or not Galliano is anti-Semitic or otherwise racist. The case against taking that view is put by a psychiatrist who, bearing in mind Galliano’s deeply troubled childhood with parents who disapproved of the fact that he was gay and taking account too of his subsequent poverty-stricken years, declares that in his view Galliano saw success as a form of revenge and made his fatal remarks under an urge to destroy his image, a kind of suicide bid. Certainly, the period before 2011 became one which through both fame and hard work imposed immense pressures on Galliano and led him into alcoholism and drug-taking – one example of being completely out of control came when he was found naked in a hotel lift and deprived guests of the use of it for several hours. Whether or not you buy into the psychiatrist’s views there is certainly plenty of evidence that this often-arrogant man was in a bad way. That does indeed lead into the key question that arises: whether or not his drunken state at the time of his remarks could be seen as a reason to forgive him since he now claims not to know why he made them and is seemingly even confused as to whether or not it happened more than once.
In the long run one is faced by somewhat conflicting evidence as to whether or not the remorse that Galliano now claims to have is indeed genuine. Macdonald seems to leave it to the viewer to come to a decision on this having earlier decorated his film in a rather precious manner by inserting clips from The Red Shoes (as a comment on the pressure that exists on artists) and from Abel Gance’s 1927 film Napoleon because Galliano was influenced by it in his youth. We hear very little from Galliano’s long-term lover Alexis Roche who has always stood by him and ultimately it is difficult to form any judgments about this man with certainty. At nearly two hours the film has time to spare but it still leaves one with the impression that a biopic was never the best setting in which to study the central issues in Galliano’s life, namely racism and whether or not there can ever be grounds for forgiving remarks of that nature.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring John Galliano, Sidney Toledano, Anna Wintour, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Philippe Virgitti, Bernard Arnault, Robin Givhan, Vanessa Friedman, Amanda Harlech, Tim Blanks, Boris Cyrulnik, Anne Nelson, Penélope Cruz, Charlize Theron, Hamish Bowles, Abe Foxman, Jonathan Newhouse, Alexis Roche.
Dir Kevin Macdonald, Pro Kevin Macdonald and Chloe Mamelok, Ph David Harriman, Magda Kowalczyk, Patrick Blossier and Nelson Hume, Ed Avhesh Mohla, Music Tom Hodge.
KGB Films/Condé Nast Entertainment-Mubi.
117 mins. UK/USA/France. 2023. UK Rel: 8 March 2024. Cert. 15.
