- Director: Kevin Macdonald (UK, USA, France). Year of Release: 2023
A bar in Paris, 2011. Someone, who has clearly had too much to drink accosts fellow-drinkers with the following rant: “I love Hitler. People like you would be dead today. Your mothers, your forefathers would be fucking gassed and fucking dead.” When asked “do you have a problem?” he answers “with you? You’re ugly”. Later, he uses epithets “fucking ugly Jewish bitch” and “fucking Asian bastard”. The people who he is accosting are not even Jewish.
We cut to an interview with John Galliano, who made these offensive remarks. Galliano promises: “I’m going to tell you everything.” For maybe 90 minutes, the subject is not brought up again. Instead, we start with inevitable footage of 1980s London, full of desperate unemployed people, punks in bin liner dresses, and anti-Thatcher demonstrations. Galliano takes pains to tell us that he most definitely was not part of the protest movement, and instead was just happy to study Art.
Although we later see footage of Galliano shaking hands with Thatcher, he attempts to profit from radical chic. His breakout show Ley Incroyables contained French revolutionary costumes, although he was much more interested in the floppy hats than in any sense that society could change. For all his claims to be punk, Galliano’s vision depended on society maintaining the same old certainties. His father may have been a plumber, but he wanted to hobnob with the people in charge.
Footage of punks are replaced by endless shots of New Romantics, maybe the least political and most self-obsessed of musical genres. Although even some New Romantics were political (Gary Kemp even played Red Wedge), Galliano was happier with the more hedonistic part of the scene – the Thatcherites, who celebrated style and looking just right over being able to afford your day to day life. He, and his art, absolutely shared these conceited values.
There are two ways of judging High and Low. One requires a great deal of subjectivity. It just so happens that I have very little interest in the fashion “industry” and endless footage of catwalks just does nothing for me. On top of this, the John Galliano who comes across to me in this film is vain, superficial and uninteresting. Large swathes of the film were boring. I recognise that others are really interested in this sort of shit. Maybe you’ll get something that passed me by.
For this reason, I will largely ignore the first 90 minutes of the film, which talk about Galliano’s great success at Givenchy and Dior. Apparently there were great shows, Apparently his contribution was hugely creative, and exhausted him. This is possible, but I just care so little for these scenes that I feel unable to feel any empathy. You have a problem making designs for clothes too expensive for real people to wear? Then, stop doing it. You are producing nothing of any value.
The film gets more interesting when it looks at Galliano’s antisemitic and racist outburst. His behaviour is clearly affected by overwork and mental illness, so even I feel a certain amount of sympathy. But Galliano shows so little understanding of the pain he has caused, let alone a willingness to atone for his sins, that he remains utterly unsympathetic. He is only interested in saying sorry when the cameras are rolling and an apology might work to his advantage,
For all the fabrication of neutrality, this concentration on Galliano and his celebrity friends slowly builds up a case that because he is a famous creative, different laws apply. Naomi Campbell is asked whether she has seen the video of his antisemitic tirade. She hasn’t. Why not? “Because I know John”. Similarly, Kate Moss helps the campaign to rehabilitate Galliano by asking him to design her wedding dress, with all the obsequious media attention that this implies.
The sad truth is that High and Low is the case for the defence in a trial where the defendant really does not have a case to answer. He is guilty, and we have documentary evidence to prove this. The only defence that is offered is that he is famous and celebs should be judged by different standards. Some of his defenders claim that the real responsibility lies with addiction to alcohol, prescription drugs and a need to be loved – illnesses which only the rich are allowed to have.
The overwhelming sense is one of privilege and entitlement. We learn that a hotel was forced to compensate all of its guests when a naked Galliano took over its lift, pretended to be a lion, and refused to let anyone enter. This story is told as an example of the depth of the artist’s mental troubles. Which, of course, it is. But you have to have a certain level of wealth and fame for the hotel to pay off the victims of your misdemeanours rather than sending in the riot squad.
Just as you think things can’t get worse, they do. As Galliano was looking for redemption, he let himself be photographed in full Hassidic gear, that is in the clothing of a culture for which he had shown neither respect nor understanding. You might defend his action as just “John being John”, but you can’t see the photos without feeling that he was aiming at a new level of ignorance and missing the fucking point. You’re left thinking whether Galliano is insensitive or just plain stupid.
High and Low is a pernicious film, not least for the way in which it claims impartial objectivity while at the same time begging our support for a man who we see on film as being an antisemite and racist. It’s case that he isn’t that sort of guy is not just implausible, it is an insult to our intelligence. We are provided with video evidence that he is exactly that sort of guy. We could do with a lot less special pleading and much more analysis, how so many people could enable his racism.
CinePhil 