All That Glitters

McQueen” and “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

- Anthony Lane

If you had never heard of Alexander McQueen, and knew nothing of his trade, the opening credits of a new documentary, “McQueen,” would leave you none the wiser. We see butterflies, a cranium’s dome, and scaly skin of many dazzling hues. Was he a lepidopterist, then, or a forensic archeologist, or an authority on chameleons? Or is this the tale of a serial killer and his dark, duplicitous art?

None of the above, as it happens, although McQueen, the British fashion designer who ascended to fame in the nineteen-nineties and hanged himself in 2010, was much possessed by death, and by the ravaging allure of the animal kingdom. (He remarked of one stately outfit, worn by a model in 2006, “It looks like she’s rammed the piece of lace with her antlers.” Try to imagine Yves Saint Laurent saying that.) Of all the footage that the film unearths, the least surprising clip shows him gauntleted, with a bird of prey on his wrist. Out on the catwalk, feathers gleam on bodices and skirts. A corset consists of a rib cage and spine, forged from aluminum and tapering to a tail.

The year after McQueen died, a retrospective of his work, “Savage Beauty,” was staged at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More than half a million people came, as if it were a theatrical hit, although not many Broadway shows go on till midnight, as “Savage Beauty” did on the final weekend of its run. The emphasis was more on the clothes than on the ripped and messy life of the man who created them, and, if you were driven to speculate on the fertile murk of his mind, so much the better. Now, however, the co-directors of “McQueen,” Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, have decided to redress the balance.