What are the limits of forgiveness? Is making a documentary about a disgraced public figure, in which that remorseful person is allowed to try to explain their actions, inherently an act of damage-control propaganda? Or can it be a way of letting them tighten their own noose? Since its premiere at Telluride last September, Kevin Macdonald’s High & Low – John Galliano (2023) has fueled such heated conversations. Leaving many of its inquiries open-ended, this documentary is about neither complete condemnation nor exoneration. Instead, Macdonald tries to make sense of the enigma at his film’s center: a man who does not deny committing a hate crime over a decade ago, but who still claims to have no memory of the events or how he got there.
Widely admired for his audacious style and designs, Gibraltar-born John Galliano was a towering figure of fashion throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Soaking up references wherever he could, he took notable inspiration from cinema, including Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927), which loomed large over his French Revolution–themed debut show in 1984. Clips from Gance’s film feature throughout Macdonald’s documentary, which charts Galliano’s tough childhood in East London through his ascension of the haute couture ranks to become the head of Dior. Along the way were struggles with drugs and alcohol that can be expected of an enfant terrible, but in the early 2010s came a twist that no one saw coming. Videos emerged of a heavily intoxicated Galliano in a Paris café launching into an antisemitic and racist tirade, including an expression of admiration for Adolf Hitler. Criminally charged in France, he was also fired from his role as creative director at Dior. Now sober, Galliano has worked to understand why he did what he did, though a full set of clear answers may still be elusive.
Given his filmography, Macdonald would seem an ideal person to tackle Galliano’s turbulent story. An Oscar-winning documentarian (One Day in September, 1999) and a director of Oscar-winning performances (The Last King of Scotland, 2006), the Scottish filmmaker deftly switches between fiction and nonfiction storytelling on both big and small canvases. Many of Macdonald’s films are rooted in shocking real events; his most recent narrative feature, The Mauritanian (2021), stars Tahar Rahim as Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was tortured and detained without charge for fourteen years in Guantánamo. And Macdonald has made many documentaries about artists, dating back to The Making of an Englishman (1995), which follows his own journey to get to know his grandfather, the screenwriter and director Emeric Pressburger. Musician portraits Marley (2012) and Whitney (2018)—about Bob Marley and Whitney Houston, respectively—are among Macdonald’s other commercial and critical successes in the documentary form.
I spoke to Macdonald about High & Low – John Galliano in November 2023, a few months before the film’s theatrical release but after it had already bowed at Telluride and the London Film Festival…
Full interview for Notebook
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