The Last of England

"On a green hill, mourners stand and weep for the last of England," intones Nigel Terry at the start of this arresting mission statement from art-house infant* terrible Jarman. The film is a barrage of striking imagery, mixing old Super 8 footage of a child playing in the back garden with shots of a teenage punk shooting up in a garage, and the middle-aged Jarman, apparently chronicling vanishing species of plant in some kind of futuristic warehouse. Then there's clips from news reports, audio of Hitler, some staged stuff about paramilitaries and - of course - a naked yuppie having sex with a soldier on a massive Union Jack. An air of paralysing despair permeates this one-of-a-kind movie, which takes on state-sponsored violence, the Thatcher government, misguided building projects, the trashing of the environment and American cultural imperialism - all in the opening half hour. Not all of it hits the target, and some of it may only make sense to Jarman, but for every piece of self-mythologising pretentiousness there's a pithily employed phrase (courtesy of T.S. Eliot or Allen Ginsberg) or thought-provoking juxtaposition. Like the sounds of a Nazi rally segueing into a vicious sideswipe at military discipline, then military pageantry. Or widow Tilda Swinton ripping her wedding dress to shreds - even as she wears it - on a nuclear beach. The Last of England plays like the forlorn, obscene illegitimate child of Humphrey Jennings' hymn to the nation - Listen to Britain. I liked it. Great soundtrack too, put together by Simon Fisher-Turner, and containing Elgar, Marianne Faithful and a spot-on pastiche of '30s musical numbers called Broadway Boy.

*Yeah, I know this should have an 'e'. IMDb isn't so sure.

The other day was Derek Jarman's birthday. I discovered him last year because I really like independent cinema, particularly from the fringes of society, and his name came up repeatedly. So on a whim, I bought "The Last of England". When BFI described him as a "queer pagan punk" for his birthday, I knew it was time to put that movie on and give it a whirl. It was a wholly unexpected, but mostly pleasurable, experience.

"The Last of England" is a highly personal bitch fest about the state of the country and even the world as it was in the mid 80s. Jarman was English and was reacting to life under the Thatcher rule, while I was an American living under Reagan rule. I think more than anytime before or since, the English and American experiences coincided culturally in the 1980s. Jarman's film was shot in 8mm, shaky cam and all, and is more or less and decoupage of raw emotions and experiences of growing up in the cold war, never knowing when the bombs will drop, and being led by leaders who seem to think such a state of constant anxiety is sane. Add to it, the newly emerging queer revolution and the punk scene, complete with drugs, and life at the time did seem quite precarious.

I loved the odd stream of consciousness, the nightmare visions, the lack of dialog or plot or even characters. Well, OK, I loved about 2/3 of it. The last 15 minutes which was where Tilda Swinton came in with her wedding gown made the least sense to me and could have been cut with no loss (which pains me to say as I admire her, but here she was like an extra at the last moment to add time and a name to the film, which was already quite intriguing). I enjoyed how he merged past with home family videos with present and future. I'm glad to have the film and I will certainly look for more by Jarman, though he is clearly not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Derek Jarman has drawn his title and theme from the Ford Maddox-Brown pre-rafaelite masterpiece "The Last of England" painted in 1855.

The film is a blast of fury against Thatcherism and all its crypto moralistic tripe. Jarman is angry - REALLY angry about the state his country has been reduced to by the conservatives and all their works. This is an amplified echo of the painting, where the English couple and their baby set off on a ship and leave England for the last time. They are resigned to their fate. Jarman it seems, is resigned to his, but he isn't going quietly.

The Last of England is a mess. A disjointed ugly collection of impressions. A nasty kaleidoscope which is difficult to enjoy. However, when one moves away from searching for a narrative it gets easier.

The things we recognise are soon twisted and used against us and it's unsettling. This is all deliberately arranged to elicit a response in the viewer. Some will be appalled, but some won't get it. This encapsulates Jarman's view of England in 1987 and it's not pretty.

As the film closes out we see Jarman return the story to its source and we sense a final regret that there is no going back.

Jarman is a tough filmmaker to recommend, but he occasionally rewards. As we've seen from practically the first film on, he sets out to make pictures entirely for himself; with each one intellectually structured, creatively shot, but almost always a reflection of his personal thoughts and feelings, his sexuality, and England in decline. Here we have a film that combines all of these preoccupations, told in a combination of wordless images and narrated prose, with little or no clarification given as to what is actually going on. Jarman has said that he wanted the film to feel like a visual poem, but really, this is far from poetic. Instead, this seems more like something that Godard would have directed in the 1970's; angry, venomous and always seething with contempt. The images here are violent to the extreme and the approach that Jarman brings to the editing room is visceral and heavily kinetic. Here we see the use of various colour filters, tints and distortions used alongside a multitude of film stocks and spliced-in video footage. The images of middle-class households rounded up, driven into the depths of a post-apocalyptic wasteland and detained at gunpoint must have had a shocking relevance at the time, when terrorist attacks and IRA bombings were as common as they were incomprehensible.

Other notable images depict a couple of soldiers dressed for manoeuvres copulating on the Union Jack; a naked tramp rummaging around a land-fill, with his bare feet barely missing the scattered syringes and shards of broken glass, and most effectively; Tilda Swinton as a young bride, ripping off her wedding dress under an acidic skyline whilst a parade of well-wishers cheer and applaud. Often the film can become a chore, especially when it becomes obvious that the director is preaching as opposed to suggesting, however, it must be said that images throughout speak volumes. Nonetheless, the real problem here, or at least, for the majority of viewers, is the fact that from a 21st century perspective, Jarman's message will seems somewhat obvious, and indeed, overstated. An hour and a half of alienating, shocking and largely episodic rambling mixed with poetic ruminations is a lot to ask when your ultimate message seems to be "England is in decline, and it's getting worse". It's a real shame too, especially considering the extent that Jarman has gone to in crafting this abstract and almost post-apocalyptic landscape.

A film like this makes you wonder what Jarman would have made of Britain twenty years on. Acceptance of sexuality, race and the roles of gender seem to have become more widely accepted, however, even here, it is often fragmented and approached (in the media at least) with a sense of irony. It would also be interesting to see how Jarman would interpret the rise in anti-social behaviour, teen violence and vandalism, terrorist attacks and the asylum issue, the dominance of advertising and the rise of the "new-lad" culture. I suppose you could easily interpret Jarman's feelings on subjects of this nature from his past work, though it's obvious from the treatment of these subjects in films like The Last of England, as well as his subsequent works, The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991), that the director saw darker, more troubling issues still on the horizon. Ultimately, The Last of England is a hard film to recommend to an audience, as it isn't intent on offering entertainment, but rather, expressing a personal opinion and a sense of feeling within fixed theme. However, it is an entirely original experience, filled with thought and some incredibly astounding images that are sure to appeal to anyone with a taste for Jarman's work or a fondness for the more extreme side of the avant-garde.

Jarmen manages to create a world stinging from Thatcherite policies, with viscious imagery burning on the screen. If you want an indictment of the eighties without irony loaded sentimentality or crass stereotypes, then experience The Last of England.