191 Jubilee

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Martha
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191 Jubilee

#1 Post by Martha » Sat Feb 12, 2005 8:55 pm

Jubilee

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When Queen Elizabeth I asks her court alchemist to show her England in the future, she's transported 400 years to a post-apocalyptic wasteland of roving girl gangs, an all-powerful media mogul, fascistic police, scattered filth, and twisted sex. With Jubilee, legendary British filmmaker Derek Jarman channeled political dissent and artistic daring into a revolutionary blend of history and fantasy, musical and cinematic experimentation, satire and anger, fashion and philosophy. With its uninhibited punk petulance and sloganeering, Jubilee brings together many cultural and musical icons of the time, including Jordan, Toyah Willcox, Little Nell, Wayne County, Adam Ant, and Brian Eno (with his first original film score), to create a genuinely unique, unforgettable vision. Ahead of its time and often frighteningly accurate in its predictions, it is a fascinating historical document and a gorgeous work of film art.

To read actress Tilda Swinton's speech honoring Derek Jarman, click here.

Special Features

• New high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Peter Middleton and enhanced for widescreen televisions
• Original documentary on Jarman and Jubilee made by Jarman actor Spencer Leigh (Caravaggio, The Last of England), featuring interviews with stars Jenny Runacre and Toyah Willcox, film historian Tony Rayns, production designer Christopher Hobbs, and filmmakers John Maybury (Love is the Devil) and Lee Drysdale (Leather Jackets), with rare Super-8 clips and memorabilia from the film
• Ephemera from Derek Jarman's personal collection, including his scrapbook from the film illustrated with rare photos and notes
• Original trailer
• Liner notes by Jarman biographer Tony Peake
• English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
• Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

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Theodore R. Stockton
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#2 Post by Theodore R. Stockton » Sun Jun 26, 2005 1:35 pm

Has anyone found a good way of printing out the online essay so it can be folded and put in the case with the booklet? I'm not computer savvy enough to do it.

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#3 Post by ape » Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:10 pm

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=3711

I'm intrigued after reading this.


Can anyone shed some additional light on this film?

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LightBulbFilm
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#4 Post by LightBulbFilm » Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:00 pm

The film itself is a HUGE painting of what Jarman wished would become of the future (I say wished because after readin about him I found he was very big into the punk scene.). This film gets a bad rap and poor ratings, but it's not a bad movie... It's great. The whole feel to the film itself is odd yet enjoyable and the story reminds me of a 50s sci-fi movie (Don't ask me why, but it does.) That's all I can aside from I'm glad it's in the collection. Definitely a worthwhile movie, and possibly one of the most important films ever.

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benm
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#5 Post by benm » Thu Nov 17, 2005 12:42 pm

as someone who very rarely enjoys anything even remotely "sci-fi" i thought this movie was horrible and i can't imagine most people finding this interesting unless they're into "sci-fi"
i found nothing redeemable in this film including acting, jarman's vision of the future, etc.

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Mr Pixies
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#6 Post by Mr Pixies » Thu Nov 17, 2005 6:18 pm

LightBulbFilm wrote:The film itself is a HUGE painting of what Jarman wished would become of the future (I say wished because after readin about him I found he was very big into the punk scene.).
That's interesting, I heard that this movie was a slam against punk, and that Jarman hated the punk scene. Or is that just what people thought it was?
Definitely a worthwhile movie, and possibly one of the most important films ever.
I'm interested in why you think this,
benm wrote:as someone who very rarely enjoys anything even remotely "sci-fi" i thought this movie was horrible and i can't imagine most people finding this interesting unless they're into "sci-fi"
i found nothing redeemable in this film including acting, jarman's vision of the future, etc.
It's stretching it to call this sci-fi....and I certainly wouldn't say this is for sci-fi fans only, ha. More like those who like "camp".

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zedz
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#7 Post by zedz » Thu Nov 17, 2005 8:57 pm

Mr Pixies wrote:
LightBulbFilm wrote:The film itself is a HUGE painting of what Jarman wished would become of the future (I say wished because after readin about him I found he was very big into the punk scene.).
That's interesting, I heard that this movie was a slam against punk, and that Jarman hated the punk scene. Or is that just what people thought it was?
I think the relationship is rather complicated. Jarman had his own 'scene' going throughout much of the seventies, which had little overlap with punk, and in Jubilee he's using punk as a marketable hook that will allow him to explore his own idiosyncratic interests. As Mr Pixies points out, Jarman's vision is (over)loaded with irony and camp (and that incongruous classicism that runs through all his work like a rivulet of golden piss) that has little to do with much of punk. Consequently, there was a fair amount of punk loathing directed at the film (see Vivienne Westwood's notorious t-shirt denunciation, for example).

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#8 Post by soma » Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:17 am

Just saw this and to be honest, Jubilee has to be the worst Criterion release I've ever seen. What a mess! Absolutely couldn't wait for it to end. I generally love alternative cinema but this was just pretentious ad nauseum...

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sevenarts
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#9 Post by sevenarts » Sat Mar 10, 2007 11:34 am

I'm curious, in light of all the trash thrown at this film -- are the people who don't like this film generally familiar with Jarman's later works? Or is it just that this is the only Jarman people are watching just because it's on Criterion? I like the later experimental films I've seen by him (Angelic Conversation, Last of England, Blue), but I've been a bit reluctant to dive into earlier films like this one given all the hatred that seems to be directed towards them.

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#10 Post by soma » Sat Mar 10, 2007 12:53 pm

I haven't seen any other Jarman works to date. But I generally try to see as much Criterion as possible, as their choices - even if a film is not to my personal tastes - are nearly always interesting, sometimes eye-opening, often jaw-dropping masterpieces... most at least worth seeing once. However this is definitely the first Criterion release in which I desperately wish I could have my two hours back.

It's like a faux intellectual, faux artistic, faux philosophical punk rocker shat in a Victorian-era masturbatory directors head and the man awoke confused, with a head full of shit, and decided to share it with the world.

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vogler
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#11 Post by vogler » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:49 pm

sevenarts wrote:I'm curious, in light of all the trash thrown at this film -- are the people who don't like this film generally familiar with Jarman's later works? Or is it just that this is the only Jarman people are watching just because it's on Criterion?
I mentioned this film somewhere in another thread and I believe I referred to it as being 'wretched'. I have become familiar with a lot of Jarman's work since finding it through the music of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic T.V. and Coil. He's not a real favourite of mine but I do like a lot of his work, particularly the more abstract films. I first saw Jubilee many years ago when I had green hair and played in a punk rock group called Snot and Shit, or something to that effect, and I watched it because it was about punk rock. I remember remarking to my mohican friend 'that is the worst fucking piece of shit I've seen in my life'. Anyway, years later I discovered the work of Jarman and it was only then that I realised the film was by him. Thinking that my negative reaction was just related to my youthful ignorance I decided I'd better give it another go. I thought maybe I would like it more after all this time, but no, it's still a piece of shit. The performance of Toyah Willcox is the diarrhoea icing on the shit filled cake.

I'm not alone in this opinion either. I have a friend who is more of a Jarman fan than I am and he also finds the film to be a big sack of shit. A real stinker. But don't let my opinion put you off, we all have different tastes and you might like it.

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Tommaso
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#12 Post by Tommaso » Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:25 pm

A general reaction to "Jubilee" among the punks when it first came out in 1977 was that it sucked because of being too artsy (the film was advertised as the 'the first punk rock film' or something). I guess the bad reputation it got then has never really worn off. Still it has many moments and themes that are illuminating with regard to Jarman's later works: the alchemy of John Dee, the devastating view from outside on contemporary England (when QEI visits the country of QEII, in a way foreshadowing "The Last of England"), and let's not forget: it's also a sort of 'music film', and I can't help it: I find Jordan's version of "Rule Britannia" almost worth the price for the whole dvd, and the same goes for Jack Birkett's performance as the music mogul. Perhaps not the best place to start when you're new to Jarman, but I find it much more entertaining (in the common sense of the word) than "Edward II" or his debut, "Sebastiane".

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zedz
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#13 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 12, 2007 1:40 am

For a filmmaker with such consistency in his themes, preoccupations and motifs, I've long been surprised by the inconsistency in quality of Jarman's features, at least as I perceive them.

Looking back, I'm sort of surprised that I seem to have seen all of them, never intending to be a completist. For every film that I'm prepared to strongly defend (Edward II, Blue, Glitterbug, The Tempest) there's one that leaves me completely cold (The Garden - a.k.a. "Fannying about with Flares", War Requiem, Jubilee). Even the quite lovely Angelic Conversation strikes me as rather pallid: nice wallpaper, shame about the film.

Jubilee is, at best, a period curio with a few nice ideas in it, but it's extremely problematic as an entry point to Jarman's work. One of his queer takes on a 'straight' subject would be better: Edward II, Wittgenstein or The Tempest - which is the ideal antidote to both Jubilee and Greenaway's abysmal Prospero's Books (ducks). Alternatively, and probably equally significant, are the rambling thematic sensation-fests, of which my favourite (apart from his atypical final two films) is probably The Last of England - at least, that's the one whose images have lodged most solidly in my brain.

Loathing Jubilee and loving, or at least respecting, Jarman is no paradox - so proceed with caution but without fear.

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Tommaso
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#14 Post by Tommaso » Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:30 am

zedz wrote: The Tempest - which is the ideal antidote to both Jubilee and Greenaway's abysmal Prospero's Books (ducks).
Interesting combination. That "The Tempest" is a far better constructed film than "Jubilee" is pretty obvious, but I don't understand your aversion to "Prospero's Books", especially if you compare it to Jarman's version. They share a lot in my view: the painterly images, the situating of the Shakespeare text in its Elizabethan contexts (the alchemy of John Dee in "The Tempest", the whole lot of Renaissance knowledge in "Prospero"), the general anti-realist stance of both films, and both directors' tendency to quote wherever they can (the sailor's dance in "The Tempest" comes straight out of Powell's "Red Shoes", for example). PG is said even to have phoned Toyah Willcox asking her to send him a VHS of Jarman's film for study before he set out to do his version. Admittedly, Jarman's Prospero is far more informed by modern-day postcolonial readings of the character, whereas Gielgud of course plays the impeccable sage of old in Greenaway's version. But both films are a far cry from any other film or stage version of "The Tempest" I ever saw. So why do you find "Prospero" abysmal if you like "The Tempest"?

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#15 Post by Gropius » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:35 pm

zedz wrote:Greenaway's abysmal Prospero's Books
How could a project filmed by Sacha Vierny and featuring some two hours of John Gielgud's speaking voice be deemed 'abysmal', unless you really happen to dislike Gielgud (who convinced Greenaway into making it)?

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Barmy
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#16 Post by Barmy » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:41 pm

Oy. Greenaway's best and most humane film.

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zedz
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#17 Post by zedz » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:43 pm

That's why I ducked. "Abysmal" was admittedly provocative!

Prospero is where I lost patience with Greenaway. Gielgud is great, some of the underlying material is fascinating (a 'documentary' about the books would have been far more worthwhile than the film itself, in my opinion, but then A Walk through H is my favourite Greenaway), but I find the film so cluttered (conceptually, but primarily visually) that it's relentlessly ugly: there's not much even Vierney can do with all those overloaded tableaux.

The Tempest is a work about authorship, and I like the idea of Greenaway making a film from it that riffs on contested authorship (with Shakespeare, Gielgud and Greenaway vying for top honours), but the crucial problem with the film as I see it is that Greenaway loads the dice so heavily against his potential co-auteurs by making his own aesthetic so overbearing and airless that he ruins this intriguing idea. Instead of being a film about contested or conflicted authorship, it becomes an exercise in egomania, with Gielgud and Shakespeare swamped. A feat rather than a film.

Jarman's version is much less ambitious (but still very ambitious), and in allowing the original text more room to breathe, it has a much healthier and interesting relationship with Shakespeare. You can engage with both Jarman's film and, through that film, with the play; with Prospero's Books you just hit a Greenaway-shaped wall. Jarman's Tempest has texture and weight where, in the Greenaway, I just see oppressive decor.

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#18 Post by Tommaso » Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:19 am

The points you mention are those that have been brought up against Greenaway ever since he started making features, and are not only pertaining to "Prospero's Books". So, to a certain degree it's a matter of taste and personal willingness to 'decipher' the film (reminds me of a review I read about Thomas Pynchon's new novel: "Other writers have readers, Pynchon has decoders").

Greenaway's direction, as always, IS egomaniac, but isn't the play precisely about that? An all-knowing magus, building a world of his own in which he is completely in control and in which he either manipulates the other characters (Miranda, Ariel) or, if they 'misbehave' like Caliban, has no qualms in exercising his usurped powers? Greenaway makes us aware of that important strain in the play, perhaps unintentionally, and thus offers a way in which we engage with the play in the way you mention with regard to Jarman's version. But even if that was not the case, I cannot quite see why a film of a play should necessarily want us to engage with the original play. A film, like a play, should be self-sufficient. Of course it's interesting to compare "Ran" to "King Lear" and find out all the differences and changes, but Kurosawa's film carries its message quite on its own. And so, in my view, does "Prospero's Books".

Interestingly, Jarman asked Gielgud to play Prospero in his version first, but Gielgud (who had obviously seen "Jubilee" before), was less than amused and declined the offer. Gielgud had wanted to play Prospero in a film version for years, though, and the first man he asked, quite tellingly, was Michael Powell. The project fell through for several reasons, as we know, but if there's one film that constantly reminds me of "Prospero's Books", it's "The Tales of Hoffmann". "Prospero" is very much a 'composed' film in Powell's sense, a complete unity of images, text and music, and the actual telling of the plot becomes very much a secondary affair.

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#19 Post by Barmy » Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:43 am

I understand the clutter argument. But I can't see how anyone who likes Greenaway could hate PB. Also, did you see this theatrically? Small screen (and yes, that includes your 60-inch flatscreen) would do PB no favours.

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#20 Post by Tribe » Tue Mar 13, 2007 1:49 pm

zedz wrote:The Tempest is a work about authorship, and I like the idea of Greenaway making a film from it that riffs on contested authorship (with Shakespeare, Gielgud and Greenaway vying for top honours), but the crucial problem with the film as I see it is that Greenaway loads the dice so heavily against his potential co-auteurs by making his own aesthetic so overbearing and airless that he ruins this intriguing idea. Instead of being a film about contested or conflicted authorship, it becomes an exercise in egomania, with Gielgud and Shakespeare swamped. A feat rather than a film.
An interesting take, Zedz...that Prospero's Books is something of a competition of sorts between potential authors. Looking at it from that perspective, I agree...Greenaway overwhelms everyone else. But aside from the fact that it is, after all, Greenaway's version...it's a powerful experience in film-making.

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#21 Post by soma » Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:44 pm

Barmy wrote:I understand the clutter argument. But I can't see how anyone who likes Greenaway could hate PB.

Why? I consider myself a fan of Greenaway and yet, like Jubilee, I absolutely detest Prospero's Books. It's hard to think of two more utterly pretentious, unbelievably / mind-numbingly boring, self-indulgent, incoherent wank-fests in the history of cinema. Actually a French title I saw at MIFF some years back, La Vie Nouvelle, fits this description aptly, also.

At least Prospero's Books was definitively stunning to look at. But that's all it had going for it, and even then quickly became an excercise in excess and a trial of patience. Give me The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, A Zed And Two Noughts and Drowning By Numbers any day. In fact I have to say the more Greenaway abandoned narrative the less I liked him.
Last edited by soma on Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Barmy
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#22 Post by Barmy » Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:51 pm

Hmm. Stylistically Zed is not that different than PB. And at least PB is about something. I love almost all of Greenaway, btw.

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#23 Post by soma » Tue Mar 13, 2007 3:03 pm

Fair enough, but I do see a divide in his work and his shift away from any and all attention to narrative as well documented - at least to a point where it surely can't be an unreasonable assumption to suggest that it's possible to be a fan of Greenaway and yet not a fan of Prospero's Books. It would seem his Tulse Leper projects are more of the same, hence me steering well clear.

Interesting discussion though. I'm glad I'm not the only one who heavily dislikes Jubilee, Prospero's Books, etc.

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zedz
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#24 Post by zedz » Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:23 pm

Barmy wrote:I understand the clutter argument. But I can't see how anyone who likes Greenaway could hate PB. Also, did you see this theatrically? Small screen (and yes, that includes your 60-inch flatscreen) would do PB no favours.
I saw it theatrically, day of release in London. Then I saw it again (theatrically) a couple of months later, because I couldn't believe it was as bad as I'd first thought (as I'd enjoyed every other Greenaway I'd seen at that point).

As with soma, PB is my personal tipping point with Greenaway. I don't think I've actually liked any of his subsequent films - they just seem to get ever more arid, cluttered and pompous, losing the intellectual liveliness and humour that animated his earlier films. I know a lot of early fans who have had similar experiences, but the tipping point varies - some bailed out after The Cook, the Thief, a lot more with The Baby of Macon.

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Barmy
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#25 Post by Barmy » Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:39 pm

I can understand why the tipping point would center around PB. For me, PB was his last masterpiece, although the first part in the "Tulse Luper" series was a slight return to form (the second and third parts are good but a bit wearying). I still like all his stuff a lot except Pillow Book (enough about books) and 8.5 Women.

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