Movie review: The September Issue

by Teresa Gubbins

Just as sports fanatics have their "March Madness," fashionistas have the holy September issue, the hotly-anticipated annual fashion yearbook from Vogue magazine. Officially, the issue presents the fall/winter collections of the major fashion designers -- but what it really does is dictate how we'll dress over the next year, with all of the attendant effect on consumerism and pop culture that entails.

The magazine's also become a barometer of American prosperity: The 2008 issue, which came out just as the economy began to sink, had 798 pages, whereas the newly-minted 2009 edition has shrunk to a mere 584 pages.

The September Issue, a documentary by R.J. Cutler (who produced The War Room and co-directed A Perfect Candidate), details the assembly of the magazine's September 2007 issue, the largest ever with 840 pages. Cutler and cameraman Bob Richman spent seven months behind the scenes following the magazine's major players and the intricacies of their decision-making process.

The "get" that Cutler got was the participation of editor Anna Wintour, previously elusive but here uniquely accessible -- perhaps an effort to set the record straight after her unflattering portrayal in The Devil Wears Prada. The irony is that, even with her participation, Wintour's frosty British demeanor keeps her mostly impenetrable, despite one-on-one interviews and a scene with her daughter Bee Shaffer.

The drama lies in Wintour's working relationship with Grace Coddington, the magazine's creative director. While the two never clash on film, their perspectives represent the opposing forces of art versus commerce. Coddington is the quintessential artist who creates and produces while Wintour is the reductive editor who subtracts and deletes.

Witnessing the passion that Coddington, a former model-turned-stylist, brings to her work makes Wintour's ruthless decisions to trim it back heartbreaking, even as you can see that Wintour is not making those decisions lightly. The scene where the two wait for an elevator together in awkward silence feels like a reverse climax.

Cutler uses silence masterfully, making what's not-said more powerful than what is; the silences give viewers the opportunity to draw conclusions of their own. He's also the rare filmmaker who will simply shoot a scene -- a city street in Paris, a moment sitting in a car -- without dialog, which makes the scene that much more beautiful.

Then again, given the milieu, finding beauty in this film is hardly a challenge: dazzling clothes, gorgeous models on the catwalk, gorgeous music, and international locales -- with Vogue the arbiter of it all.