Derek Jarman -- C/D

haha or a good todd haynes movie.

rly though, 'i'm not there', only with byron ferrari.

absolutely superb review from Sewell. all the better for being fair and reasonable (not something i would expect from him but i've never read his stuff before)- i particularly liked this:

"the films that made him an icon in the uncritical world of the fervent homosexual"

& this:

"The almost innumerable other films are mere scraps... but in a sense they were the glue that held Jarman's court together and convinced his performing minions that they mattered. To an outsider contemptuously suspicious of film and video as art forms, they are as technically inept as film of a village wedding shot with a clockwork camera in the trembling grip of an octogenarian."

close minded? yes but genuinely funny. it's when the review starts to talk about Isaac Julien that it really takes off. He hits the nail on the head by talking about Jarman's main problem: his acolytes and the extravagant claims they made for him, not the work itself.

i don't read sewell often -- or many art critics, i guess -- but even if it was unfair, it was a bracing thing to read, you felt he engaged with the work. i just read a mindless review of 'derek' in the independent on sunday, and i really have no faith the writer had seen a single jarman film, or could explain what good there was in them. i'm open to there being something in them just because art* and shakespeare are blind spots for me. gonna read bracewell's 'england is mine' soon to get into this.

*i.e. caravaggio

That piece was absolutely coruscating; one artist missing from Sewell's summary was Cerith Wyn-Evans but C does not go out of his way to emphasise his links to/role as J's one-time assistant. I've never been keen on Jarman's paintings because they're a bit bad gay Kiefer. The films are odd because they're so obtuse yet every so often there's an unbelievably heady image that just makes everything STOP.

My favourite aspect of Jarman doesn't get mentioned enough - there are three memoirs and Chroma, all incredible books that make me super-jealous of him for getting an education in the Classics. Jarman's take on suburbia is interesting because it is the flipside of Metroland (also in the sense that he grew up there in NW London). It's all over the memoirs; when viewing certain films it's worth using this info as a filter.

against the odds, i liked 'wittgenstein' (scr. terry eagleton hiss hiss) a lot.

am reading 'kicking the pricks/last of england'. kind of messed up in a lot of ways -- never trust a man with a classical education -- but also yeesh hell of a weird dad. his dad was a fkn air commodore; he casually mentions the editor of the daily mail popping round for dinner at his parents.

then he says stuff like "safe sex can be awfully drab if you've experienced sodomy" because it's "suburban" and "chintzy".

Terry Eagleton's work is more intelligent, interesting, funny and illuminating than anything Jarman ever did.

Except perhaps Jarman's Smiths videos; 'The Queen Is Dead', at least, I thought terrific.

Otherwise I think Jarman was an overrated bore. But at least he mostly made pictures out of his own pocket, for relatively very low costs, and didn't waste taxpayers' money on them.

no, they were funded by channel 4 and the bfi, or german tv mostly.

Terry Eagleton's work is more intelligent, interesting, funny and illuminating than anything Jarman ever did.

i dislike both of them, but at least jarman was consistent. eagleton is simply a trend-surfer. both of them were closet catholics tho.

TE is very consistent. He says the exact same thing, in the exact same words, in books published three decades apart.

haha, i don't think jarman ever paid for a film, other than early super 8s, from his own pocket, he was incredibly well funded considering his meagre talents. the smiths videos are good although not quite as good as i remembered, they're incredibly clumsy but they are compelling.

Burchill on similar issues to some of the stuff raised on this thread:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,,343407,00.html

(I thought she wrote this about two years ago! How time flies etc.)

Two incredible links on this thread. Brian Sewell and Julie Burchill: two of the most ludicrous and pointless sots of UK hackdom, surely? And yet both their articles on Jarman are largely terrific - wise, sane, and quite brave in their criticism of this Queen Mother figure. Who would ever have thought that Julie Burchill, of all people, could write something so true as this??

--

Here, if we needed it, is proof of Jarman's complete lack of sensibility: would any true artist, be they writer, painter or filmmaker, see in a rush-hour railway carriage this seething mass of loathsomeness rather than a group of individuals with their thwarted dreams and desires? Most of us are over this kind of cheap misanthropy by the time we're halfway through our teens.

"Why do visual artists believe they can write? I would not dream of downing typewriter, running off to make a daubing, and then touting it in a public place. Neither would I prance around wielding a camcorder and expect the BFI to fund me."

replace the bfi with CH4 and she has actually done this on several occasions since.

the Sewell piece is one of the best things i've read recently. possibly he is much greater than his public persona suggests he is, i should investigate further.

more like wittgenstein, less like caravaggio, what should i watch next?

War Requiem is very good.

NYC retro. Have been underwhelmed by him in recent years, prob most interested among what I don't know in The Angelic Conversation.

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/derek-jarman

yeah his work hasn't really been any good since he died.

in a way, true

(i speak of how i have changed as a viewer, more than likely)

funny enough, when i saw some of his video work in college i thought it was impossibly pretentious but the last time i saw it (ca. 2005?) i liked it much more. still not a huge fan, really, but i guess i'd say i admire the guy.

Enjoyed reading this:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/27/olivia-laing-derek-jarman-modern-nature

(Don't really know much about Jarman ... but that made me want to read "Modern Nature.")

"Modern Nature". Incredible. What next?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/02/keith-collins-obituary

Has anyone seen the "Derek Jarman: My garden’s boundaries are the horizon" exhibition?

(And, more prosaically, is the catalogue worth buying?)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jul/21/derek-jarman-prospect-cottage-dungeness-kent-garden-museum-london

I realise that article may be the reason you asked rather than a reply to your query!

Thanks Jed_ - it partly was.

I have to confess I had one of those Coronavirus moments when I thought "Nah, not traveling into London for that" but in a way that made me feel a bit wearied and sad.

yes, I feel the same way about it.

Looks good, try and go to this.

derek jarman's garden is a bit less impressive if you actually go to visit it as every garden there looks exactly like it. Those are the plants that grow out of the rocks which are all over the place on that stretch of dungeness. him turning to sea kale is like me deciding to turn to dandelions in my garden -- they are there whatever I do.

I do like his yellow windows though.

Excellent piece on this Jarman film:

https://abolitionistfutures.com/latest-news/cops-in-culture-2-edward-ii

Watched Sebastiane tonight and it was pretty great I thought, kind of sadomasochistic but also beautifully strange and homoerotic, and all of the dialog was in Latin