THE LAST OF ENGLAND directed by Derek Jarman (UK, 1988
“It’s a love story with England. It’s not an attack. It’s an attack on those things that I believe personally are things without value.” Derek Jarman in an interview with Chris Lippard
Derek Jarman was a war child; conceived during the period of the London blitz and born on January 31st 1942. It is perhaps no surprise to find that the spectre of WWII dominates his imagination and helped inspire his surreal poetic documentary ‘The Last of England’ made in the Spring of 1987.
Jarman was in his mid-40s when he completed the film which graphically depicts a post-war and post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. While making it he was diagnosed as HIV positive. This illness was for him another battle which he waged publicly. He announced his diagnosis to the world rather than be shamed into silence. The full-blown AIDS virus would end his life prematurely six years later.
The contagion may have partly accounted for his rage but it was in him anyway. “Where’s hope? Have they killed it” are rhetorical questions asked in a movie. “Yes” comes the blunt reply. “And tomorrow?” the unseen speaker asks. The answer comes in the form of a quote from graffiti Jarman had seen scrawled on a wall in London’s Euston Road: “Tomorrow is cancelled due to lack of interest”.
This brief exchange is practically the only dialogue in a movie that evolved through improvisation; there was no screenplay. Aside from Jarman’s freeform poems (read by Nigel Terry) , most of the movie plays out without words. The director’s obscure diatribes offer few clues about his intentions. They are more full of attitude than meaning. The critic David L.Hirst called the end result “an apocalyptic roar of a movie.”
Hope certainly isn’t to be found among the dense montage of grainy images that evoke a nightmarish landscape. Figures, mostly male, are seen scavenging through broken or derelict homes and fallen industrial buildings. One junky shoots up in the rubble and masturbates on a large Caravaggio painting. Another naked man grapples with a uniformed soldier on a British flag in an act that is part erotic ritual , part violent struggle.
Hand-held images shot in Super 8 are interspersed with home movie footage of Jarman’s own parents that document more innocent times. When did then become now? What caused this great decline? The implication is that World War II started the rot and is still being played out. Based on the archive recordings of Hitler rallies, it is as if the Germans won after all.
Whatever the cause , the ‘great’ British Empire is evidently in a state of collapse and under military control. Survivors are rounded up and shot. One is executed by a firing squad. Cities hold only menace and no alternative is presented. The actor Spencer Leigh wears a Sanbenito, a heretic’s conical cap that was worn by those condemned to death during the Spanish Inquisition. In more banal imagery, a shopping cart is seen dumped in a river like an early mock-up of Banksy’s Constable parody.
The soundtrack offers contrasts – classical, choral , industrial noise or discordant howls reflect the disorder. Marianne Faithfull’s rendition of ‘The Skye Boat Song’ is sung as a mournful lullaby.
Clips of advertisements add to the irony – “Do you want to make more money?” is an extract from an American Express ad that serves to highlight the profit machine. Capitalism has brought us to this point and is still reeking its damage . Publicity for a necklace plays out over scenes of another naked man gorging desperately on a raw cauliflower.
The 1982 Falklands War between Britain and Argentina is an unholy backdrop to all this mayhem. “Do you enjoy the Falklands?” asks a Thatcher lookalike. A remembrance service takes place amid demolished buildings; this is a land without hope or glory.
The movie was originally called ‘Victorian Values’ and the ‘The Dead Sea’ was also suggested. The title that was eventually chosen is also that of an 1855 painting by Ford Madox Brown which depicts two emigrants with their baby leaving England to start a new life in Australia. The quiet desperation of the Victorian couple is modest and respectable compared with the raw torment of Jarman’s visions.
The final sequence in the film depicting figures in a row boat does not provide any convincing notion that escape is possible. It follows on from shots of a despairing bride (Tilda Swinton) tearing and cutting at her wedding dress. It seems that the victim of the execution seen earlier was her husband , a rare instance of any form of narrative in the film. The blending of sound and imagery is more akin to visual poetry than prose.
Derek Jarman’s disintegrating world is fired by the similar but starker ‘no future’ ethic previously seen in ‘Jubilee’ made a decade earlier. The key difference is that, ten years on, the angry energy inspired by the rebellious jukebox of punk rockers is now burnt out. The recurring motifs of flames and flares are now of a country on fire with no way forward and only twisted nostalgia and an anachronistic monarchy to look back on. Here the poison in the human machine is deadly and there is no cure.
