Jubilee

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.

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)

Limit your expectations and be pleasantly surprised. Jubilee is invaluable as a document of anarchic art-school preoccupations in a Britain riven by socialist failure (Thatcher wasn't elected until two years later). Judging by the credits, Jubilee was a creation of faith, hope and goodwill and the cast give it their sometimes amateur all, with entertaining debut appearances from the likes of Jordan, Toyah Wilcox and Adam Ant and proper thesps like Little Nell and Jenny Runacre doing their best with the film-school script and direction.

As feature-film entertainment, Jubilee's a non-starter. But as a caveat-emptor period piece it works fine, and I for one am grateful it was made.

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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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.