Gregory Nussen is the Lead Film Critic for Screen Rant, with previous bylines for Deadline, Slant, Backstage, Salon and more.
Amongst artists, fashion designers must be the most difficult to humanize. Their output is intrinsically tied to commercialism. You wear a piece by Tommy Hilfiger; you don't wear a painting by Jackson Pollock.
Fashion must be both aesthetically valuable and utilitarian, not unlike architecture in that way, but certainly more tied to marketing and money than any other art. Marc Jacobs' name is so ubiquitous that to humanize him seems like a contradiction in terms, but Marc by Sofia - that is, Marc Jacobs by Sofia Coppola - does that and more. It is a stirring vision of a singular artist in process, made by a fellow unique voice who shares the niche fact of having a last name that sometimes overshadows their work. In some ways, the film is reminiscent of Jane B. par Agnès V., the lyrical documentary on French-American actor Jane Birkin by the cinematic poet Agnès Varda, which created a multi-layered portrait of both subject and filmmaker in the same breath. Coppola's film is not as self-referential, but there is an implicit redirection that she achieves through looking at her longtime friend, and in so doing has made a documentary on two people that is both intellectually rigorous and refreshingly intimate. It helps that Jacobs is so intensely likable. He's articulate and wryly funny, insightful about himself and charmingly self-effacing. It's always comforting when such a giant has the same hangups as all of us, and Jacobs reveals himself as relatably human, comparing himself to other designers and people he repeatedly assumes are either better or more well-informed than he is. Coppola chooses to frame the documentary as part-interview, part behind-the-scenes as Jacobs prepares for his next show, and that mutli-faceted approach does more than anything else to reveal the intricacies of a brilliant mind whose self-questioning is an integral part of the artistic process. That makes sense considering Jacobs' work, which has always thrived on the basis of its persistent questioning. At each turn since his days as a student at Parsons College in New York, Jacobs has questioned the boundaries of acceptability, creating whimsical designs which challenge accepted norms. He's a very well-spoken subject, and, like so many great artists, has a library of references that he can pull from at any given moment. Amongst those influences are dancer and filmmaker, Bob Fosse; pop-art provocateur Andy Warhol; avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch; cinematically-inspired photographer Cindy Sherman; New German Cinema pioneer Rainer Werner Fassbinder; and, perhaps most revealing, Marcel Duchamps, who once upon a time shocked the art world by presenting a toilet in a gallery as art, a moment which irrevocably sent ripples through all mediums in how it questioned our very notion of what the term even means. Of course, Jacobs is also inspired by all the former masters of his domain: Perry Ellis, whom he worked for out of college, Yves Saint-Laurent, Bergdorf Goodman. What all of them have shared is a certain confidence in experimentation, and a bravery - in fact, a genuine desire - for failure. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, or in Jacobs' case, you can't create a masterpiece without shedding some fabric. And his atelier is packed to the gills with it.
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