Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27946 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-07-23
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 76 minutes

Synopsis
Derek Jarman records his thoughts and experiences as he battles with the HIV virus. His own words are delivered by John Quentin, Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton and Derek Jarman himself. The music is provided by Simon Fisher Turner.

Customer Reviews

Incredibly Moving
Blue was Jarman's last film. He was reaching the end of a long battle with HIV at this time and the film reflects that, with its elegaic quality. Part of his illness manifested as a loss of sight, a critical and deeply tragic thing for a man whose life was so visual and visionary. This film pays homage to that loss in that visually it is just an intense blue screen, and what we hear is most important.

Jarman had a great affinity with the colour blue, and uses the film to explore its deeper meaning and symbolism in relation to his art, his life and his impending death. The intensity of the colour and the stark lack of images, particularly coming from a man who was known for the intense beauty and collage like layering of images, particularly in his films is part of what lifts this film out of the ordinary and makes it a masterpiece.

The voices work well, blending and melting into each other to create the kind of sense perceptions you would usually expect to get from his visual work. Here, your imagination is forced to work hard to fill in the blanks, but it is well worth the effort.

The text is taken from Jarman's own diary, his work Derek Jarman's Garden and some original material. It holds together well and is incredibly moving, pushing us as the audience to truly inhabit Derek's world, if only for a short time.

A fitting epitaph and a must see for anyone interested in his work.

EXTRAORDINARY
I've little to add to the above review other than my rapt admiration of this film. It came on TV late at night and I watched it in order to receive some of the beautiful humanity of Derek Jarman. Few reviews of the film I've seen mention the music and acoustic backdrop to the words yet this sonorous static gives an extra life to what is in effect a radio play, which I say without meaning to denigrate or mis-understand the use of the symbolic blue screen throughout. As good as Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood', which shows the level of profundity of this art-film.

We lost a profound humanity with the passing away of Derek Jarman.

Under a cloudless summer sky
Considering the context for this film I felt spiritually uplifted by Jarman's poetry and courageous attempt to juxtapose physical deterioration against the beauty of living and the experience of love. Some of his films (e.g. Angelic Conversation and Last of England) provide only a fractured narrative and fragmentary imagery but offer a cohesion that makes the whole feel like a transcendental meditation unsurpassed in the history of film. Blue goes one step futher and leaves it to the viewer to ponder a blue screen and wonder 'what if....'.