{"id":19699,"date":"2023-02-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-13T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=19699"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:11:34","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:11:34","slug":"the-last-of-jarman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-last-of-jarman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last of Jarman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Following the burst of activity in the late \u201970s that produced three features in four years \u2013 1976\u2019s Sebastiane<\/em>, 1978\u2019s Jubilee<\/em>, and 1979\u2019s The Tempest<\/em> \u2013 pioneering queer filmmaker Derek Jarman spent the first half of the \u201980s chasing financing for a film about Baroque painter Caravaggio, which didn\u2019t see the light of projector bulbs until 1986. By a cruel quirk of fate, that was also the year Jarman learned he was HIV positive, a diagnosis he received in late December with characteristic gallows humor. As he wrote in his diary, \u201cThe young doctor who told me this morning I was a carrier of the AIDS virus was visibly distressed. I smiled and told her not to worry, I had never liked Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painfully aware of how little time he had left, yet determined to make the most of it, Jarman set his sights on smaller, personal projects that didn\u2019t require the largesse of a hidebound film industry that never had much use for him or the controversy his films invariably kicked up. Coming one decade after the incendiary Jubilee<\/em>, 1987\u2019s The Last of England<\/em> was Jarman\u2019s second salvo on the state of the nation, this time after eight years of Tory rule under Margaret Thatcher. That\u2019s just one of many reasons for the pessimistic title, along with the footage of boarded-up homes, fenced-in housing estates, and abandoned buildings decorated with National Front graffiti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filmed in Super 8 \u2013 a medium Jarman had been working in since the early \u201970s \u2013 The Last of England<\/em> was shot without a script, a practice he carried over to 1990\u2019s The Garden<\/em>, a mix of Super 8, 16mm, and video effects that probes the oft-contentious intersection between religion and homosexuality. Incorporating footage of a Gay Pride parade, The Garden<\/em> alternates scenes of Tilda Swinton as the Virgin Mary with a gay couple reviled by society at large and put through the Stations of the Cross for their sins. Unsurprisingly, that would not be his last word on the persecution of gay men in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a deep hatred of the Elizabethan past used to castrate our vibrant present.\u201d \u2013Derek Jarman, <\/strong>Queer Edward II<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The feature that represents Jarman at his angriest and most overtly political is his 1991 adaptation of Christopher Marlowe\u2019s Edward II<\/em>, an entirely studio-bound affair as rife with deliberate anachronisms as Alex Cox\u2019s Walker<\/em>. Its story concerns the love of King Edward II (Steven Waddington) for the disgraced Piers Gaveston (Andrew Tiernan), who is called back to court by the newly crowned king, having been sent into exile by Edward\u2019s father. Gaveston\u2019s return ruffles the feathers of the church, the nobility, and Edward\u2019s wife, Queen Isabella (Swinton, a constant presence in Jarman\u2019s films from Caravaggio<\/em> onward). All in their own ways seek to keep the lovers apart, which inspires Edward to moan more than once, \u201cWas ever a king so overruled as I?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as Jarman\u2019s Edward II<\/em> can be seen as a plea for acceptance (or at the very least tolerance) of its central gay couple, he doesn\u2019t shy away from allowing Tiernan\u2019s Gaveston to come off as petulant and vindictive. One of his first acts upon being bestowed the titles of Lord High Chamberlain and Earl of Cornwall is to take revenge on the Bishop of Winchester (Dudley Sutton, late of Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils<\/em>, for which Jarman did the production design at the start of his film career) for being instrumental in his banishment. Jarman shows Gaveston\u2019s more tender side, however, when Edward\u2019s nobles contrive to have him sent away again and the lovers\u2019 parting dance is to Cole Porter\u2019s \u201cEvery Time We Say Goodbye,\u201d sung by Annie Lennox. He then raises the specter of police brutality in the scene where Gaveston is slain by the king\u2019s enemies and stages a full-on protest by gay rights organization OutRage!, newly formed the year before. There were a handful of scenes, however \u2013 including Edward\u2019s infamous demise by hot poker \u2013 that Jarman couldn\u2019t be on set for due to his worsening illness, forcing him to leave them in the hands of his co-writer and associate director, Ken Butler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


\u201cDon\u2019t think I\u2019m afraid of dying. It\u2019s death that gives life its meaning and shape.\u201d \u2013Ludwig Wittgenstein<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Butler performed the same functions on Jarman\u2019s next feature, the unconventional 1993 biopic Wittgenstein<\/em>, a playful film about a philosopher who admitted he had an underdeveloped sense of humor. Butler\u2019s presence on set was a necessity as Jarman\u2019s sight had been failing him for years, a condition that led to his final work, 1993\u2019s Blue<\/em>, being an entirely aural experience, with the only visual component a screen filled with the title hue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As personal a statement as Jarman could make on film without exposing so much as a foot of it, Blue<\/em>\u2019s soundscape is made up of music, sound effects, voices, and actor Nigel Terry reading selections from the director\u2019s diaries alongside ruminations on his loss of sight and playful associations with the color blue. (The latter are an extension of his book Chroma<\/em>, which covered all the colors of the rainbow.) Throughout, his biting sense of humor is in full effect, particularly when Terry rattles off the laundry list of side effects of just one of the AIDS drugs keeping Jarman alive. Also palpable is his sadness as a recitation of names turns into a requiem for those who have gone before him. Blue<\/em> is a film born of sadness, of anger, of fear, of rage, and of resignation. \u201cMy mind bright as a button, but my body falling apart.\u201d That is the tragedy of AIDS, succinctly captured in 76 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Derek Jarman died on February 19, 1994, he left behind a dozen features, nearly as many books, an array of music videos, and dozens of Super 8 films. A selection of these were edited into the 54-minute collage Glitterbug<\/em>, scored by Brian Eno and broadcast on the BBC\u2019s Arena<\/em> a month and a half after his death. Without Jarman to write the commentary for it, Glitterbug<\/em> went out without any narration, but coming from someone who spent his last years making his private life as public as possible, the identity of the man behind the camera is never in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jarman\u2019s films are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of <\/em>\u201cQueer Britannia: A Derek Jarman Retrospective.\u201d<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of queer cinema\u2019s most outspoken voices, Derek Jarman has a career-spanning retrospective this month on The Criterion Channel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":19701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1422],"class_list":["post-19699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21777,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19699\/revisions\/21777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}