Main Cast: John Quentin, Nigel Terry, Derek Jarman, Tilda Swinton
Release Year: 1993
Country: UK
Run Time: 75 minutes
Plot
A year before director Derek Jarman succumbed fully to AIDS, he made his last film. In Blue, the color blue is all there is to see as Jarman tries to bring the audience into his vision-impaired world. Jarman offers his insights on life, love, disease, the meaning of art, and the symbology of the color blue over a blue screen. Actors, including Tilda Swinton and John Quentin, also read from Jarman's journals and poetry. ~ John Voorhees, All Movie Guide
Review
Tragic, angry, sad, and ultimately unclassifiable, Blue was radical queer filmmaker Derek Jarman's last project, as the ravages of AIDS carried him off to an agonizing death. His work toward the end of his life is shot through with longing and melancholy: Edward II (1991), also known as Queer Edward II, is loosely based on Christopher Marlowe's play, and uses it, quite appropriately, as a platform for gay activism; and Wittgenstein (1993), Jarman's last film with conventional visuals, deals not only with the philosopher's ideas, but also with Wittgenstein's identity as a homosexual man. However, during the shooting of both these films, Jarman was losing his eyesight due to the disease, and on both projects he had to employ a "ghost" director to work from his storyboards when he was ill. By the time of Blue, his vision had deteriorated completely, until all he could see was a pale shade of translucent blue before his eyes, and nothing else. Thus, this film, which consists entirely of a blue screen for 80 minutes, is a final farewell to the cinema, and offers Jarman one last chance to rage against the dying of the light, and the homophobia that informs society as a whole. In addition to Jarman's voice on the soundtrack, Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, and John Quentin offer contributions, along with scraps of sound effects and music. The effect is almost unendurable, but then, that's the point; dying of AIDS is a horrifying experience, and Jarman wants to make it very clear that he's not going out without a fight. Blue is a one-of-a-kind film, and a daring visual and social experiment; as such, it is recommended for all serious students of cinema and those interested in the social and historical issues that surrounded the gay community in the 1990s. ~ Wheeler Winston Dixon, All Movie Guide
Blue is the twelfth and final feature film by director Derek Jarman, released just four months before his death by AIDS-related complications. Such complications had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film's release.
The film was his last testament as a film-maker, and consists of a single shot of saturated blue colour filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack where Jarman's and some of his favourite actors' narration describes his life and vision.
On its premiere, Channel 4 and BBC Radio 3 collaborated on a simultaneous broadcast so viewers could enjoy a stereo soundtrack. Radio 3 subsequently broadcast the soundtrack separately as a radio play and it was later released as a CD.
The film ends with the words:
In time,
No one will remember our work
Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
And be scattered like
Mist that is chased by the
Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow
And our lives will run like
Sparks through the stubble. I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave
The film has been released on DVD in Germany and in Italy. On July 23, 2007 British distributor Artificial Eye released DVD tying Blue together with Glitterbug, a collage of Jarman's Super 8 footage.
As part of his design to "infuse queerness" as deeply as possible into his 2002 film Luster, director Everett Lewis closes the film with a poem read over a solid blue screen in reference and tribute to Jarman and Blue.[1]
.jpg)
