Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12402 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-02-16
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, Colour, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Synopsis
Derek Jarman's apocalyptic view of late-20th-century England, thought by some critics to be a sequel to his postpunk JUBILEE, is an intensely personal piece of cinema that masterfully combines all of the director's trademark sensibilities. In THE LAST OF ENGLAND, Jarman employs arresting images, sparse narration (by Nigel Terry), rock & roll, gay erotica, and his own home movies to create a searing and beautiful survey of 1980s Great Britain, devastated by greed, violence, and environmental disasters. Shot in Super-8, transferred to video for editing, and then blown up to 35mm, the film is carefully controlled by Jarman, who compiles and unleashes the intense color and images on the screen in a nonstop surrealistic torrent. Jarman, a prolific journal writer and painter, creates a world of childlike nostalgia bathed in his own memories and journal entries, mourning for the film's present. Images of punk-rock squatters running wild over an urban wasteland are juxtaposed with sepia-toned home movies of Jarman as a small child. Diagnosed with AIDS in the mid-1980s, Jarman ruminates on the ever-present concept of death and dying. The film's progression, from childhood innocence and the early days of WWII to raging warfare, terrorism, and rampant homophobia, reflects a bleak version of Jarman's own life. This seminal creation is an elegant and highly original visual masterpiece, featuring music from Marianne Faithfull and Diamanda Galas.

Customer Reviews

the last of true cinema
The Last of England is like jarman's The garden, The Angelic conversation, Glitterbug and even Blue (in a quircky sort of way), a movie that consists of film- and sound colages. No lineary narrative, no dialogue, just found footages, super 8 visuals and a bizarre collection of music: original score by Simon Turner, and existing pieces like that of Barry Adamson, Andy Gill, a song that is called 'Disco death', and the stunning voice of Diamanda Galas. never has an atmosphere been so utterly depressing and yet ever so arresting and captivating. Jarman is a visual poet, a visionair of it's own, talking through series of disturbing images about opression, alienatiuon and downfall of society as we know it. This is cinema-non-grata at it's best, or: anti-cinema if you will either, because it steps on all written and not-written rules on moviemaking and still succeeds in being art in a true sense. Beware, this movie consists of nothing other than sequences that will haunt you and even mess you up. Especially the final sequence in which a young bride, caught by an unearthly storm, tears up and partly eats up her own wedding dress, driven by an agony for which there is no explanation. But Jarman proves that great cinema can be without explanation.

Prophet of urban chaos
Not for everyone, Derek Jarman's vision of a chaotic and socially fractured post-apocalyptic England reflects the turbulence of the Thatcher era.
Social protest, the anti-poll tax riots, the heavy hand of the police at Orgreave, and the brutal SPG, are all depicted here in an expressionistic
tumult of images which is sometimes hard to follow.
My copy was rather worn, but after cleaning plays OK.

Great Film, Dodgy Package
It's an amazing film but this isn't a very good presentation. The cover is a colour copy, the DVD graphics have been copied from another print, and the film itself looks like it's been ripped from a VHS tape. Hopefully the BFI will rescue this film at some point, but until then this version will have to do.