Jubilee

Let me start off by saying I love Derek Jarman's work. Caravaggio and Edward II are among my favorite films. But he, like a lot of filmmakers, just didn't get punk. I realize that this movie is about more than punk and what it has to say about society and class is important. But dressing people up in torn clothes and playing any generic loud/fast music does not equal punk. Having so many non-actors in important roles doesn't help either. If you want a film that gets what punk rock is about, has something to say about society, and has great music, try Rude Boy.

I'm going to be honest right from the start: I've only seen two films from the late Derek Jarman, this and The Last of England (1987). And I must say that neither of them made much of an impression on me. Jubilee tells the disjointed story of Queen Elizabeth I, who bored by her own existence has her court astrologer and an angel invent a time travel devise that will allow her to travel forward to twentieth century Britain. Once again Jarman revels in pointing out the failings in modern British culture, from the violent punk scene that the main characters are part of, to the harsh severity of the music industry and corporate big business. This has no precedence over the plot, because Jubilee has no plot, just a rambling incoherent mish-mash of filth and vulgarity, which Jarman seems to think will help drive his message of a Britain on the brink of self-destruction home. Jubilee is a film that so obviously wanted to be hip it hurts, looking back it seems Jarman took everything that was just about to explode into the public conscious and structured a highly self-indulgent story around it. So we are shown one of the most miss-representative looks at punk one could ever imagine, and a cast that reads like the who's-who of seventies underground celebrities (Richard O Brien rubs shoulders with the likes of a chubby Toyah Wilcox and a pre-fame Adam Ant). Jarman was clearly pandering to his overly inflated ego, after his gay swords and sandals "epic" Sebastiane (1976) was hailed a modern classic. Jubilee is yet another product of art-house cinema gone wrong and film-making in it's most brash and unsubtle form.

Jubilee, being a Derek Jarman film, obviously sets out to shock. An assorted set of punks and deviants live together in a garish open plan hell festooned with pictures of Hitler. Mad, an orange haired punkette (Toyah Wilcox, these days much more toned down and almost normal) and Amyl Nitrate (played by the unusual Jordan), a very weird lady who dreams of being a ballerina and talks about Myra Hindley, fight with each other. The regal Bod (Jenny Runacre, very good in this in both roles) doubles as Queen Elizabeth, wandering with her soothsayer John Dee (Richard O'Brien) and emotionless angel Arial, through a Britain tottering on the brink of revolution as the Silver Jubilee hits. Other dotty characters include Viv, an artist, and Angel and Sphinx (Linda Spurrier, Ian Charleson and Karl Johnson, who all went more mainstream than this later in their careers), who seem to do very little. Little Nell plays little whore Crabs, and Adam Ant plays slow-witted Kid, who is adopted by the freaks into their little gang. Cue a lot of raucous music, satirical comment on the media and the establishment, and a fair amount of unpleasant murder. And some plastic petunias. It does have its moments, but as a whole it is a bit of a mess. For visual style and flair it scores highly, but on everything else maybe the jury is still out.

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)

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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