Live to Tell

The powerful, engrossing documentary High & Low: John Galliano sees the designer tell the story of his life.

- Maya Singer

There’s a little hidden park, Le Jardin des Rosiers–Joseph Monteret, in the heart of the Marais in Paris. The secluded spot takes its name from the principal of a local elementary school, who—after witnessing the roundup of 165 of his Jewish students in 1942—committed himself to the anti-Nazi resistance and scrambled to keep as many other young people from the gas chambers as he could. “N’oubliez pas!” commands a plaque in the park. “Do not forget!”

A leisurely 10-minute stroll away from Le Jardin des Rosiers– Joseph-Migneret, you will find La Perle, a hip brasserie with outdoor tables jammed up against one another in the classic Parisian manner. People go there to be seen, and one night in 2011 what onlookers saw was a man insulting the couple beside him, saying, among other choice phrases, “I love Hitler,” and “People like you would be dead—your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed.” Someone recorded the rant with his phone. It’s an upsetting video: Upsetting because of what the man is saying—noxious, shocking things— and upsetting, too, because the man saying them is drunk beyond proper cognition, eyes dim, slurring his words. This man, of course, is John Galliano, creative director of Dior at the time and, by general consensus, one of the world’s great fashion designers, acclaimed for his theatrical magpie vision and the maximalist joie de vivre of his clothes. How did this person, so affirming of life’s splendid variety in his art, find himself in such an abject state, giving voice to such hate?

That is the question at the heart of High &