Focus on DEREK JARMAN: Blue (1993)

I've read some horrifically personal accounts of the ravages of AIDS. Some introspective. Some revealing. Some longing. Some despairing. The common thread is the anger. Anger at succumbing to a virus that has been linked so speciously to sexuality and subculture - an act that has, in the eyes of most within our community, hastened the deaths tens of thousands of us.

Creating art on the threshold of straight-secured oblivion is no mean feat. Blue, Jarman's final film, created as his battle with the virus was coming to a head, is as personal and as scathing as one would expect from an artist as self-reflexive and as politically active as Jarman was.

It is also as avant grade; a stream of consciousness filmscape with images etched with sound alone.

The screen, a single blast of blue, replicates Jarman's loss of sight, a process he describes in detail as the film progresses.

The bath of blue light (which must be overwhelming on the big screen) draws in memory and music.

It washes some memories clean and it drowns others in distain.

It is a blue of peaceful moments in Jarman's garden

and of intrusive medical examinations.

It recalls long lost journeys and pilgrimages never undertaken.

It is a boundless space.

Crowded with memories,                   with fellow patients,

                  with delightfully filthy choristers,

with fleeting touches,         with brushing kisses,

with hopeful encounters with men.


Everything dissipating into nothingness,

Jarman, both resenting and resigned to the approaching unknown.

And he is gone.

I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave.

This post contributes to Director Focus: Derek Jarman.