Daily Movie Rec 7/9/2023
The Last of England (1987)
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked."
Directed by: Derek Jarman
Cinematography by: Jarman, Christopher Hughes, Richard Heslop, Cerith Wyn Evans & Tim Burke
Country: United Kingdom/West Germany
Plot:
An apocalyptic elegy, a howling political tirade, a disorienting fantasia.
Reasons to watch:
Like many of Jarman's more indefinable experimental films, there's no concrete plot in The Last of England: the emotion evoked is the message, and structure is its language. Jarman's increasingly radical postmodern storytelling defined his filmography as he thoroughly deconstructed genre, sometimes melding its parts into a surreal patchwork, sometimes melting it down into a primordial stew - taking the form back to its most basic nature of image, image, image, and each one's immediate relation to what comes before or after, using music to fully reveal the emotional detail each sequence shaped. The Last of England is the latter of these two deconstructions: a boiling cauldron of fragmented impressions spilling forth a crimson monsoon the fear, anger, devastation, and betrayal Jarman felt in the face of Margaret Thatcher's England.
The Criterion Channel/Kanopy
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