Jubilee

Clearly this is not a movie for just everybody. It's an artistic movie, without a real story in it and lots of odd moments and characters in it. However once you get into the movie and understand its 'world' you get somewhat taken by it, no matter how weird things get.

This is the sort of production you normally will only see in some obscure and small theater. It's also probably where it belongs, since it's not really the type of thing that translates itself well to the silver screen. The artistic approach to its world, characters and the acting and the whole idea behind this movie seems to be all more suitable for a theater production than a movie really.

But having said that, I obviously didn't hated watching this movie. I could really appreciate it for what it was and what it was trying to do and tell. It's a kind of pretest movie and social commentary, that seems to fit really well within its time period and captures its time period really well too. The movie has a rebellious flair to it and it's kicking against numerous things, which all made me remind this movie somewhat of "A Clockwork Orange" (which this movie also tries to impersonate, I believe), also with all of its characters, settings and dialog.

Surprisingly enough the movie also has some good musical numbers in it. After all, the movie is still a punk rock movie as well, which all also really adds to the movie its overall style of film-making and its atmosphere that goes along with it.

This movie is simply good enough for what it is, once you get into it.

6/10

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I can think of a great many words to describe Jubilee. Yet the one that I most want to scream is pretentious art-house crap. All these borderline masturbatory gushing reviews for this pap smear of a "film". why? because it "thinks outside the box", or "in your face", or "poetry in action"?? The former two might be true, the latter one is NOT. This film is not punk, it's tripe. Tripe of the worst kind boring, inane, idiotic tripe.

My Grade: F

DVD Extras: "Jubilee: A time less Golden" Documentary; Jordan's Dance (a super-8 short); theatrical trailer; shooting script; costume sketches; Continuity stills; "a new wave movie" (a collection of odds & ends)

I have only one word for this film. Pants!.

I watched this film in college as part of a Media & Culture lesson, and I felt that this was a complete waste of time. The film had no reason, no story, and above all, made no sense. This is without a doubt, and I say this with my hand on my heart, that this is the WORST film that I have ever seen in my whole life, and I doubt that I will ever see anything worse than this in the future. And I didn't even get to watch all of it because the lesson finished. I would like to see the rest of it, but only to see how the ending could maybe improve an already messed up film. This makes home movies look like major Hollywood productions. Avoid at all cost, and if anyone you know talks about it, and says that they liked it, I strongly suggest that you make new friends.

Jarman uses real people and places. He had an eye for the beauty of gardens planted with plastic flowers, wastelands with grass and daisies waving in the wind, Westminster Cathedral, people like Toyah, Jordan, Helen the dwarf. It's subversive on many levels, being a celebration of bisexuality and fetishism ("This is Chaos, our au pair!"). Jarman himself can be spotted once. I love Jordan's history lessons, read in an immature voice, and the fact that people sound off at length. In some ways the film or even punk itself was a protest against the obliteration or rewriting of history (note Jordan's old-fashioned twinset and pearls). Non-standard people are allowed to be beautiful and sexy - both Jordan and Toyah are pretty overweight. Jordan's obscene rendition of Rule Britannia is a show stopper. Over 20 years later, capitalism is still with us but Derek Jarman sadly is not. xxx

This Derek Jarman film is split between Queen Elizabeth I and John Dee talking about.... well, I'm not sure what, and modern nihilistic young people living a slovenly life. At first I thought it was going to be a contrasting of the high-flown aspirations of the Enlightenment and an ironic view that "yes, this is what we fought Hitler for"

Well, that's present, but Jenny Runacre as the Virgin Queen doesn't offer much in the way of commentary. I suspect Jarman expected his audience to compare and contrast and reach the correct conclusion, with a strong hint from the director. As such it lacks passion and subtlety, and I'm still wondering why Jarman's policeman wears a helmet which doesn't seem to protect his head.