Blue **** (1993, voices of Derek Jarman, Tilda Swinton, John Quentin, Nigel Terry) – Classic Movie Review 5022

Writer-director Derek Jarman’s 1993 twelfth and final feature film is a complex meditation on the nature of AIDS with a soundtrack but no visuals. The featureless saturated blue screen serves as an ambient backdrop to a beguiling mix of poetry, sound effects, music and narration.

The voices, including Jarman’s own, as well as those of Tilda Swinton, John Quentin and Nigel Terry, reveal Jarman’s life and vision and some of his story of living with the HIV virus, his treatment for symptoms, meeting other patients and gradual loss of sight. The result is a startling, deeply personal work, ferociously ambitious in its humane and intelligent response to the AIDS tragedy. AIDS claimed Jarman’s life on 19 February 1994, aged 52.

It won the Michael Powell award for Best New British Feature at the 1993 Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The score is by Simon Fisher-Turner and music contributions come from Miranda Sex Garden, Coil, Brian Eno, and Duritti Column.

Channel 4 and BBC Radio 3 made a simultaneous premiere broadcast on 19 September 1993 so viewers could experience a stereo soundtrack. Later Radio 3 broadcast the soundtrack as a radio play and it was released as a CD.

Artificial Eye released a DVD with Blue and Glitterbug, a collage of Jarman’s Super 8 footage, on 23 July 2007.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5022

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