Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is a documentary about Vivienne Westwood, a British fashion designer whom I know little about, but I was won over by the dynamic trailer and the idea of a woman so unlike her contemporaries. I went to the theater during the film’s opening weekend and left feeling like I did not get a complete story, but not because of the filmmaker, Lorna Tucker, but because of her subject.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is a perfect illustration of the problem of exclusive access. If you have access to a famous person, your movie is more likely to be a success because no one else can compete with your film. Unfortunately there is a power imbalance. The filmmaker needs the subject so she loses creative control to the subject. Whereas most people give documentaries access because they want the attention and lack the skill or access to other filmmakers to get the message out, a famous person does not have to do it, but chooses to do it because the famous person believes that the filmmaker will not distort the image that he or she has carefully cultivated. The problem for the filmmaker becomes do you scrap the film when you have lost too much control or just content yourself with making the best film possible under the circumstances. Clearly Tucker chose the latter, but there are enough moments of self-awareness in which the filmmaker explicitly answers questions that I silently had which indicates that if she could do more, she would have. As a viewer, the movie began to show signs of wear and tear about a third of the way into the movie when it begins to transition from the personal to the professional, but in retrospect, the signs were present from the beginning, it just took me awhile to notice.
Throughout Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, Westwood constantly bemoans her current dissatisfaction with the expansion of her company and the designs that her company produces, but the documentary points out that she has complete creative control of her business. She is not some shy, deferential owner like Katherine Graham’s depiction in The Post. She gives harsh criticism to her underlings’ face. We also see how her husband appears to be more involved with the daily operations while she supervises at the end. He too acts aggrieved as if negligent things happen against his will. Is something nefarious going on? If so, who is responsible? The film never even hints at what is actually happening or pushes for specifics, but allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions. Is this just a very aggressive, passive aggressive way of criticizing the other person without explicitly calling the other out? The most important relationship is the marriage then the business dynamic so I’m not suggesting that they change the way that they handle their work affairs. They are objectively more professionally successful than I will be so do whatever works for you, but it must be a nightmare to work in such an environment!
I did not know until after I saw Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, that Westwood released the following statement, “The Vivienne Westwood documentary … has been made and produced by a third party and as it stands isn’t endorsed by Westwood. Lorna Tucker asked to film Vivienne’s activism and followed her around for a couple of years, but there’s not even five minutes [of] activism in the film, instead there’s lots of old fashion footage which is free and available to view online. It’s a shame because the film is mediocre, and Vivienne and Andreas are not.” Um, if you watch the entire documentary, it is obvious that Westwood and her husband, Andreas, sat down to give exclusive interviews and permitted the filmmaker to have access to business meetings. So my inference about their disappointment coping strategy was dead on accurate.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist does have some flaws that can be attributed to its filmmaker. I think that it was a mistake to jump around time periods. There is a point in the movie when it stops going in chronological order and starts focusing on Andreas then resumes the story of her second marriage and other people that she worked with before Andreas became so integral to her life. In order to make the story clearer, perhaps the filmmaker should have given more air time to Westwood’s sons, which I know sounds like the most off putting advocacy of mansplaining about a famous woman’s life when the woman is available, but frequently, she explicitly says that she can’t be bothered, and they are the next best primary source regarding her life. Their interviews are so enlightening and provided a better framework to understand the stories that Westwood was telling.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is still worth viewing even with all its flaws. Even though the titular figure is sensationally unique, there is something universal about her awakening as a grown woman learning how to leave society’s expectations and make her own path then discover the limitations of revolutionary impulses. Westwood explains, “I knew that I was stupid, and I had to discover what was going on in the world.” The longevity of her success is probably due to a certain amount of “spatial intelligence,” not just literally, but metaphorically regarding her place in the world at specific points in time and place then a willingness to temper or make palatable her revolt to gain acceptance and respectability in places of power. Westwood realizes that even revolution is a commodity, “We weren’t attacking the establishment. We were just a part of the distraction.” Even challenges to and disruption of the establishment are part of the establishment. The filmmaker cleverly highlights this throughout the film by juxtaposing raucous archival footage with a docent at a museum describing the historical significance of the work.
I was a bit disappointed that Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist did not try to tackle how some of her images have not aged as well over time such as the use of swastikas and Soviet iconography, especially if the film was made post Brexit and November 2016. While Westwood may be revolutionary in the way that she has chosen to navigate the world as a woman, she may be a bit superficial when it comes to weightier matters. I’d prefer the generous interpretation of her actions as opposed to her actually favoring such icons for ideological reasons. This skimming of political matters may explain the performative versus substantial nature of her activism, which may be more than most people, but less than proportional to the actual power that she wields.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist is a must see for fashion mavens. It is a beautiful film that is only eighty-three minutes long so even if it is flawed, it is not a waste of time. For all her flaws, Westwood still cuts an indomitable, inspiring figure.