Derek Jarman was going blind and dying of AIDS-related illness when he made Blue. Against a screen solely of saturated blue he reflects – poignantly, humorously, sardonically – on friends, his condition, his life, on colour, death and “blind fate” in an intensely personal work that takes you to the heart of his frustration, his rage and his love. Simon Fisher Turner's soundtrack acts as a sympathetic counterpoint to his words.
Why blue? The answer partly comes through Jarman’s words. “Blue transcends the solemn geography of human limits,” he says. How fitting that a man who spent his own life transgressing and transcending petty limits should, with this final film – as with his garden created on the unpromising environment of a shingle beach at Dungeness – turn adversity into something sublime that says much about an unquenchable spirit of creativity.
“For blue there are no boundaries or solutions” he says.
The colour itself is invigorating, an electric presence – not far from International Klein Blue in fact; it makes the descriptions of terror and loneliness in Jarman’s words temporary and bearable, likewise his caustic comments born of desperation; the colour is beyond the intensity of the deepest blue sky. It becomes a focus for concentration and meditation on his words. It also puts us in Jarman’s mind, and we get close to not-seeing through his eyes – a sensation reinforced by the occasional flecks of damage to the blue print, which resemble the white flashes and black floaters that Jarman talks of in his eyes. On this blue space, Jarman conjures intimate visions. He talks of his sleep being broken by a lover: “Your kiss flares/A match struck in the night,” and all of our senses know exactly the sensation of which he speaks.
“Our time is the passing of a shadow”
In Blue, we listen to the words of a man coming to terms with sightlessness and the brief span of a human life. As his sight closes in, his mind is bright as a button, his body is falling apart, and his skin, he says, is “sitting on him like a bed of nettles”. No wonder then the moments of frustration and black humour, as when he reads the immensely long list of side effects of his medication, or says, “The Gautama Buddha instructs me to walk away from illness. But he wasn’t attached to a drip.” These moments pass however, and the need to affirm love in the present, in the here and now, assumes precedence. This is a film that makes you reach for a loved one and hold them very close.
“Kiss me. On the lips, on the eyes,” he says. “Kiss me again. And again. Never enough,” he says.
Also included on the DVD is a first release of Glitterbug, made for BBC2's Arena programme and broadcast shortly after Jarman’s death. A collage of his Super 8 footage from the 1970s and 80s, and set to a specially-recorded soundtrack from Brian Eno, it is a deluge of images, showing hundreds, thousands, of snapshots of people with whom he shared his life. With footage from home and on the streets, from gigs and fashion shows, backstage and on set, and from flats, gardens and mazes, it is the perfect accompaniment to the minimal richness of Blue.
Bonus film: Glitterbug (Jarman, 1994) with music by Brian Eno.
Film Description
Jarman faces up to his impending death from AIDS with a richly interwoven tapestry of diary extracts and poetry addressing blindness and mortality. The screen remains defiantly blue. As Jarman writes in his book on colour, Chroma, "blue transcends the solemn geography of human limits". A profoundly meditative work.
Also includes Glitterbug, an extraordinary collage of Jarman's Super 8 footage from 1970 1986, featuring an evocative, never before released, Brian Eno score.
Jarman in his last years, losing his sight through HIV and AIDS, found that images were no longer meaningful to him, and so for this film he abandons them and instead ... more >
Jarman in his last years, losing his sight through HIV and AIDS, found that images were no longer meaningful to him, and so for this film he abandons them and instead dives into the blue. The soundtrack projects images of our own onto the blue canvas: it is part diary entry, part music and song, part poetry and meditation on blue. Courage and humour shine through the diary entries, as Jarman faces up to the ravages of his illness. This is a very strong film: a good idea movingly executed.
