Apple TV's The New Look. Espionage, War, Survival, Fashion, Culture, Hope
The New Look's first season emphasizes the importance of culture to guide people through the murky realities of survival during war.
The New Look’s first season emphasizes the importance of culture to guide people through the murky realities of survival during war. Based on true people and events, we enter a dreary 1940s Paris. French haute couture struggles with principles during Nazi occupation. Meanwhile, the French Resistance undermines Nazi objectives. Throughout, the show leaves the viewer with heavy contemplations.
The story's artistic license portrays each character with a different threshold for survival. In every character, the audience experiences a spectrum of morality and immorality. Ultimately, this series subjects all characters to the human condition.
The central atelier owner, Lucien Lelong consistently pleads with his designers to keep working. The designers, now legends like Pierre Balmain, want to close the shop. Flatly, Cristóbal Balenciaga refuses to dress the Nazis. Mr. Lelong loathes the Nazis but recognizes his own fear to say nein. Lucien Lelong worries the death of French haute couture after the war if he abandons it now.
Christian Dior walks a fine line of appeasement to stay in the trade without personally dressing Nazi women. Christian latches on to his creativity as a form of mental and emotional therapy. The detainment of his sister Catherine in Ravensbrück concentration camp torments Mr. Dior's soul. His salvation is artistic expression in women’s fashion. He hopes to inspire the French through the intrinsic cultural value of beauty.
In WWII’s aftermath and ruble, Christian Dior finds his inflection point of survival. Christian accepts financial investment to start his own fashion house. Much to the dejection of Lucien who supported Christian and upheld the haute couture industry during the war. Christian's departure leaves Lucien Lelong and his colleagues in a lurch, but it is Dior's chance to create under his own conception.
In a different vein, Coco Chanel's creativity is a survival tool to escape poverty. A lesson harkened from a rough adolescence between orphanage and dance hall. Coco closes her store in protest against Nazi occupation. But Ms. Chanel leans hard on her ability to sell anything, perfumes, hats, jewelry or herself, to stay above the oppression.
The show examines the dark side of espionage as experienced by the witting and unwitting alike. Hans Gunther von Dincklage or Spatz is a spy in the worst possible sense: manipulative, extortionist, corrupt, deceptive. After blackmail fails, Spatz's irredeemable character unveils during a death threat to Chanel's nephew for money. Nazism was merely a professional outlet for Spatz's evil nature.
Coco Chanel's moral compass points due self. Her romantic liaison with the German spy Spatz helps Ms. Chanel enjoy the Parisian good life during Nazi occupation. The Aryan laws enable her to leverage the Jewish plight to her business advantage. As Coco falls down the proverbial slippery slope, the Nazi espionage ring bedevils her into the debt of the Abwehr.
Coco Chanel refuses to admit the Nazi stink, trying to wash it off at every turn. After rescuing her nephew André from Nazi detention, Ms. Chanel wiggles away from Nazi ties while increasing her wealth. André, a French solider, turns his back on auntie Chanel after learning she was a collaborator.
Elsa Lombardi is an intoxicated wanderer without the aptitude for the subterfuge awaiting her. Disastrously, Elsa's sole physical and emotional anchor is Coco Chanel. Betrayed by the same, the English Elsa becomes complicit in Nazi schemes. This real Abwehr spy tale unfolds in Madrid all orchestrated behind Adolf Hitler’s back, true to form.
Upon understanding the truth, Elsa uses manipulation to coerce Chanel for protection and care. Ultimately, Elsa's desperation kills her. Much to the regret of Coco Chanel who is now alone. Professionally, Coco lands on her feet by securing her fashion legacy and avoiding the post war guillotine.
For Catherine Dior survival means the French Resistance. Christian guiltily begs Catherine to cease aiding the Resistance out of fear and self-preservation. During an attempt to warn Jewish students in hiding, the Nazis capture Catherine.
Catherine's inflection point occurs at moment of starvation, deprivation, and impending death at a concentration camp. Ms. Dior watches silently as an innocent woman is punched brutally then tossed into the ovens over the theft of bread. Despite risking her life for others, the guilt for remaining silent in those minutes hangs like an anchor around Catherine's neck. In fact, Catherine Dior stole the bread but chose silence to protect her own life.
The goodness of a human soul is judged on a subjective sliding spectrum of acts and conditions. The degree to which someone self-sacrifices their needs for others. The willingness to protect family, neighbors, and strangers. Those who place no limits on sacrifice are heroes, a cherished rare breed. For most, at some point self-preservation, a rather individual evaluation, takes precedent.
Evil is clearer to define than good. Hendrick Himmler gleefully toasting to the eradication of Jews. Evil. Nazi torturers playing the piano to the screams of detainees. Demented. The swarthy Spatz barely hiding the killer hidden behind the swagger. Ick. In the post war streets, French men collect, humiliate and abuse female horizontal collaborators, the same women those men failed to protect. The depravity of chauvinism.
Though, Nazi sympathizer Coco Chanel’s character receives dimension. Her shadow reminds us that Nazism reflects the darkest traits of humankind irrelevant to Austro-Germanic heritage. Coco Chanel's instinct to maximize success, under the guise of survival, leaves her alone with an unapologetic selfish value system.
Catherine Dior's Resistance-era boyfriend Hervé uses her to fill his own egotistical insecurities. Hervé demands she deliver the doomed letters instead of going himself to protect her. Once captured, Hervé appears indifferent while Christian attempts in vain to free her.
While in convalescence, Hervé pressures Catherine to help family members of Holocaust victims. A task her frail and recovering mind is not ready to handle. Hervé's manipulation of Catherine to fulfill his volitions, otherwise noble tasks, is without virtue.
With impeccable performances, set and costume design, and valuable narratives, The New Look merits the 8 - 9 stars realm. However, it sits at a lukewarm 7.4 ⭐️ on IMBD. There are a few reasons for its measured commercial success thus far.
The story moves gradually to contemplate the philosophical themes and complex character evolutions. French concepts of beauty and originality in fashion are not universally understood cultural values. Sexual romps are left an allusion, a radical move for modern entertainment. The audience experiences horror through the blurry emotions of victims. The director and writer, Todd A. Kessler, never gives violence nor evil a moment of glory.
The controversial actions of the main characters are not villainized. The heroes and heroines are humanized. The writer and actors ask the audience to not judge the characters by their worst days. Instead, the narrator wants to understand the human condition in topsy-turvy Paris of the 1940s. In the end, no one escapes war unscathed.
The story’s tail conveys that culture is the guiding light of hope. In France, it was the expression of beauty in fashion. In WWII America, cultural salvation was collective cheer and athletic talent found in baseball. In today’s wartime Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia, and Haiti, let us hope artists resurface the inner light from the dark through culture to help people step over to the other side.
~E