The Last of England

THE LAST OF ENGLAND   ***1/2

Derek Jarman

1987

IDEA:  A dystopian collage of England colored by Thatcher's reign.

BLURB:  “Made in England,” the credits say, not with gratitude but with an implicit forlornness and contempt. For Jarman’s apocalyptic opus is a cri de cœur for a nation descended into political tyranny, a caterwauling lament in restless montage. Jarman’s images flicker and convulse in symphony with a baroque soundscape, creating a dyspeptic tapestry of military violence, working class poverty, and societal collapse. The skies are always the same shade of hellish, irradiated red-pink as the fires that blaze across the film’s largely decimated landscape; the overall dystopian vision bursts with iconography of World War II, the Troubles, and the AIDS crisis, yet remains vague enough that it seems practically timeless – a sobering reminder that such sociopolitical havoc never dates. As expressed formally in The Last of England, it only accelerates, as the film transitions from its relatively becalmed, poetry-narrated beginning to frenetic, wordless thickets of audiovisual chaos. This may be Jarman’s most aggravated, guttural, and resigned work, but like all his greatest films, it’s perked up by a countervailing defiance pushing back at the walls of oppression. Whether it’s a dizzying bacchanalian dance, gay canoodling atop the Union Jack, or Tilda Swinton rage-shredding her way out of her wedding dress, The Last of England speaks with a form of invigorating creative resistance that burns bright in the face of seeming hopelessness.