Title: JubileeYear: 1978Genre: Comedy, Drama, FantasyCountry: UKLanguage: EnglishDirector/Screenwriter: Derek JarmanMusic: Brian EnoCinematography: Peter MiddletonEditor: Nick BarnardCast:Jenny RunacreNell CampbellToyah WillcoxJordanAdam AntIan CharlesonKarl JohnsonLinda SpurrierJack BirkettRichard O’BrienDavid BrandonHelen Wellington-LloydHermine DemoraineJayne CountyClaire DavenportBarney JamesLindsay KempRating: 7.1/10
Title: The TempestYear: 1979Genre: Drama, FantasyCountry: UKLanguage: EnglishDirector/Screenwriter: Derek JarmanBased on the novel by William ShakespeareMusic: Brian Hodgson, John LewisCinematography: Peter MiddletonEditor: Lesley WalkerCast:Heathcote WilliamsKarl JohnsonJack BirkettToyah WillcoxDavid MeyerChristopher BigginsPeter TurnerPeter BullNeil CunninghamRichard WarwickKen CampbellElisabeth WelchClaire DavenportHelen Wellington-LloydAngela WhittinghamRating: 7.4/10
Derek Jarman’s unique vision left an indelible imprint on the world of experimental and political cinema. His body of work often challenges orthodoxies, subvert conventions, and plumb into the themes of genderqueer identities and histories. JUBILEE (1978) and THE TEMPEST (1979) - his second and third feature films - offer fascinating insights into Jarman’s radical approach to storytelling, politics, and aesthetic, dripping with decay, anarchy, and unfiltered political commentary.
Made in reference to the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 1977, JUBILEE imagineers an apocalyptic Britain in the throes of nihilism, punk rebellion, and cultural decadence. The film opens with Queen Elizabeth I (Runacre) - along with the occultist John Dee (O’Brien) and spirt Ariel (Brandon), the latter is a borrow from "The Tempest" - being transported into a future where her beloved nation has devolved into a wasteland of disorder, consumerism, and social disillusionment. The juxtaposition of these two royal figures - one historical, the other contemporary - sets the stage for a bitter critique of monarchy, power, and the society at large.
The film’s derelict buildings in London, with their garishly graffiti-covered walls and crumbling facades, are both literal and metaphorical reflections of the decline surrounding Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. They constitute an urban landscape, a built environment, that has been deserted, discarded, just like the film's cohort of rebels, coming running to revolutionize a lawless state in absence of authority.
At the heart of JUBILEE are its young protagonists, a group of punks led by the murderous and volatile Bod (Runacre again, doubling the duty representing two disparate sides of leadership), whose victim including the proto-punk artist Jayne County (playing a glam rock star named Lounge Lizard). Among the fold there are Pamela Rooke aka. Jordan, the protégé of Vivienne Westwood, whose "anti-historian" Amyl Nitrate is a die-hard feminist (who fiercely bastardizes "Rule Britannia”); Nell Campbell’s Crabs is a proto-kinderwhore, and Mad (punk star Toyah Willcox in a color-shifting crew cut), who stands out commendably for her loud imprudence and taunting mannerism. They are angry, disillusioned, unrestrained and willing to do whatever it takes to escape the crushing weight of societal expectations. Their acts of intentional violence and rebellion are not just expressions of teenage angst, they are a profound rejection of the decaying world around them.
Jarman's aesthetic is distinctly 1970s, with its gaudy, low-budget look and shady portrayal of urban entropy. The film’s lack of polish and its rawness is where lies its power, which also entrances audience to a visceral experience that feels at once bizarre and timeless. The nihilistic attitude of the characters makes for a bleak yet strangely droll narrative albeit its slapdash orchestration, majorly courtesy to the film's sense of abandonment. Everything is on the brink of collapse, everyone is disposable (with the police as the symbol of the common cruelty from the invisible Establishment), retribution is sought after with outlandish flourishes, all there is a relentless march toward damnation, a ruination of one's soul. In a sense, JUBILEE is not merely a critique on the erstwhile punk culture, but also a radical defiance against of a society’s structures and the way they trap individuals within them.
In contrast to the anarchic energy of JUBILEE, Jarman's THE TEMPEST takes on a more introspective tone on top of the Bard's time-honored texts, while still engaging with themes of power, control, and illusion on a surreal canvas. This adaptation reimagines the story of the exiled Duke Prospero (Williams), a power magus and his daughter Miranda (Wilcox, charms audience with a meeker aspect of her range here) on an island, where magic and spirits shape the fate of all who land there. The character of Ariel (played by a hauntingly ethereal Johnson), a spirit subjugated to Prospero's puissance, embodies a mystical power and the possibility of transcendence, who can manipulate events and ensnare the human characters in webs of illusion (literalized by a cobwebbed entrapment).
Operating on the twilight zone between reality and fantasy, where their boundary becomes increasingly blurred, THE TEMPEST subsists on a misty, dreamlike setting, alternating between its chiaroscuro interiors and blue-hued exteriors, which serves as a perfect backdrop for a film that is concerned with power grab, enslavement and forgiveness. Its grainy, soft-focus imagery accentuates the sense of dislocation, creating a world where nothing is quite what it seems.
While Prospero must reconcile himself with a betrayal that is the causation of his exile, a theme which feels underwritten in the film, Ariel’s longing for liberation is echoed more potently. In tandem with the farcical rebellion of the humiliated slave Caliban (Birkett, aka. "The Incredible Orlando", histrionically chewing the scenery with every single syllable and guffawing like nobody's business in both films, is quite a revelation to behold), it suggests that even the most powerful forces in the world cannot escape the constraints of their own histories and desires.
Jarman's queer agenda persists in both films, not just in imagery confections. Angel and Sphinx (Charleson and Johnson) in JUBILEE are a pair of bed-sharing, biromantic brothers who cannot escape their persecuted fate and Adam Ant's Kid is brutalized for his androgynous persona. In THE TEMPEST, such outward expression gives way to an undertow touching on Ariel's sadomasochistic subjection to Prospero. A masque with terpischorean sailors gracing a magnificent Welch crooning her signature tune “Stormy Weather” is a hallmark affirmation of diversity, hope and resilience.
While JUBILEE and THE TEMPEST offer two radically different viewing experiences, one is propelled a reckless angst and the other seems to come out of a deity’s afflatus, altogether, they represent the breadth of Jarman’s artistry and legacy: a sophisticated, nonconformist and subcultural explorer of the past, the present, and the unknown futures that lie ahead.
referential entries: Jarman's EDWARD II (1991, 7.0/10); SEBASTIANE (1976, 4.4/10); CARAVAGGIO (1986, 7.5/10).
