Main Cast: Tilda Swinton, Spencer Leigh, Spring, Gay Gaynor, Matthew Hawkins
Release Year: 1987
Country: UK
Run Time: 87 minutes
Plot
British filmmaker Derek Jarman combines his standard erotic imagery with innovative documentary techniques in his Last of England. The film traces the decline and fall of Britain as seen from the vantage points of London and Belfast. Old home movies, newly shot hand-held 8 millimeter photography, "straight" newsreel-style footage and a barrage of familiar music and street sounds all combine to create a jaw-dropping mosaic of apocalyptic allusions. Obviously not geared to everyone's taste, Last of England is an eloquent cry of anguish from one of the most accomplished British filmmakers of the 1980s. Jarman also wrote the book on which this film is based. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Sandy Powell - Costume Designer, Derek Jarman - Director, Peter Cartwright - Editor, Angus Cook - Editor, John Maybury - Editor, Christopher Hughes - Lighting, Christopher Hobbs - Production Designer, Christopher Hughes - Cinematographer, Derek Jarman - Cinematographer, Don Boyd - Producer, James Mackay - Producer, Derek Jarman - Screenwriter, Barry Adamson - Featured Music, Simon Fisher Turner - Featured Music, Andy Gill - Featured Music
Jarman wrote a book to accompany the film, which deals more explicitly with the relationship he had with his father, who was a Lancaster bomber pilot in the Second World War. Jarman used the impact of his father's despair, depression and violence on his own artistic vision. The depression that his father suffered is attributed to the high number of fatalities that bomber crews experienced and the carpet-bombing civilians. The film is also a means to explore his vision of the dissolution of traditional (pre-war) English life. (See his earlier film Jubilee to contextualize it with the 1977 punk movement of the time).
The book and to a lesser extent the film are very much in the tradition of Roland BarthesCamera Lucida, Susan Sontag's On Photography, Jeanette Winterson's 'Art Objects' and to a lesser extent John Berger's Ways of Seeing in that he has used the deeply familiar and personal as a vehicle for dialogue about art and contemporary culture.
Derek Jarman received the 1988 Teddy Award in Berlin for the film.
