A true visual
and poetic symphony, Last of England remains one of Derek Jarman’s most
experimental and popular films, bringing together a whole host of images,
sounds and cultural references.
The Last of
England is a film object with a radical singularity. Taking the opposite of
fictional linearity followed by Sebastiane, Jubilee and The Tempeste, The Last
of England unfolds a deeply diffracted narrative. many stories as heterogeneous
by the genres they summon as by the temporalities in which they fit. We thus
jump from a sequence of gay iconoclasm showing an ephemeral punk trampling on
Caravaggio’s Victorious Love (before masturbating on it) to that of the brief
execution of a man by a trio of militiamen with fascist-like looks. Both
appear, moreover, to unfold in a near and dystopian future.
These hooded
and armed men will be discussed in another episode featuring a group of
captives and captives placed in their care. And over which seems a frightening
genocidal threat. But on the other hand, there is no trace of these
paramilitaries during their escapes to the edges of the fantastic, alternating
the ancient vision of a dancing fauna and that of a "Boschian" one of
a torchbearer with a strange conical headgear. The same supernatural fragrance
still pervades the wild dance of a woman embodied by Tilda Swinton, filmed in
slow motion against the background of the setting sun, and akin to some
shamanic ecstasy. The same Tilda Swinton who, in previous scenes with queer
humor, embodies a virginal bride (or almost ... since accompanied by a newborn)
having for witnesses two beefy bearded and hairy, dressed in Pompadour fashion...
If the
reappearance of certain protagonists can fleetingly create in the spectators
the impression of a narrative continuity, this is however regularly put in
check by the sudden emergence - most often cut, the editing sometimes goes as
far as to curl the epileptic - images fundamentally foreign to the scene in
progress. In particular those that Derek Jarman will draw from amateur films
made by his own grandfather and father between the 1920s and the eve of the
Second World War. Some of these stills show members of the filmmaker's family
smiling placidly at the camera. Others show shots of RAF airplanes on the
ground or in flight filmed by his father in service. And these documentary
projections thus dynamise the internal coherence of the fictional sequences.
Relating to a
priori antithetical registers, these images from reality and those produced by
the filmmaker are nevertheless linked by a disturbing formal kinship. Derek
Jarman has indeed chosen to shoot the whole of The Last of England in super-8.
What's more, filmed by an extremely mobile camera - at the risk of being clumsy
like that of an amateur - the film's most extravagant science-fictional or
dreamlike flights take on para-documentary attire. And the eye soon finds it
difficult to distinguish the authentic Jarman family archives from the shots
imagined and staged by the director. As if the latter did not seem to make any
difference between these traces of reality that are the memory images of home
movies and those artificial ones coming to represent his fantasies ... Such an
assimilation is not without recalling the point of view of Alain Resnais
regarding to the question of memory and the images generated by it.
The director
of Hiroshima mon amour envisioned memory not as a documentary recording of
reality but as an integral part of the imaginary. The Last of England would
still be - in its admittedly hardcore way ... - by its script explosion evoking
that of Muriel or the time of a return or even of Stavisky ... And whose
apparent disorder marries in reality the erratic dynamic of the imagination. It
is therefore possible to understand The Last of England as a fascinating
"documentary on the imaginary" by Derek Jarman himself. A reading to
which the filmmaker himself seems to invite his spectators. Since the opening
sequence stages him as the narrator of a film whose images seem, by the grace
of the editing, to literally flow from his speech.
In addition, constantly echoing other titles by Derek Jarman, The Last of England brings together in a single film motifs scattered between Sebastiane, Jubilee and The Tempest. From Sebastiane, we find in The Last of England his ambivalent evocation of sexuality, viewing it as well in its most solar light as in its most distressing aspect. Notably in a halting sex scene between Eros and Thanatos, showing a naked man roughly making love to a militiaman against a backdrop of Union Jack. The punk vandalism sequences in The Last of England evoke the iconoclastic connection to art that Derek Jarman spectacularly demonstrated in Jubilee. In addition, The Last of England incorporates in its more baroque episodes the aesthetic of The Tempest, mixing cross-dressing and wonder in an ostensibly queer way.
Both
compendium and manifesto of his inner universe, The Last of England was
undoubtedly also a kind of anticipated testament for Derek Jarman. We will not
forget that the filmmaker made this film in 1987, barely a few weeks after learning
of his HIV status on December 22, 1986. That is to say in times when surviving
AIDS was inconceivable as well. as recently recalled 120 beats per minute of
Robin Campillo. While Derek Jarman obviously did not know he would succumb to
the consequences of the virus eight years later, he no doubt considered his
days to be numbered when he produced this sumptuous work of The Last of
England.
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