The Last of England (film)
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| The Last of England | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Derek Jarman |
| Written by | Derek Jarman |
| Starring | Tilda Swinton Nigel Terry Jonathan Phillips Spencer Leigh Rupert Audley |
| Music by | Simon Fisher Turner Andy Gill Mayo Thompson Diamanda Galas Barry Adamson |
| Release date(s) | 1987 |
| Running time | 87 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Last of England is a (1987) British film directed by Derek Jarman.
It is a poetic, rather than realistic, depiction of what Jarman felt was the loss of traditional English culture in the 1980s. It is named after a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown.
Jarman wrote a book to accompany the film, which deals more explicitly with the relationship he had with his father, who was a Lancaster bomber pilot in the Second World War. Jarman used the impact of his father's despair, depression and violence on his own artistic vision. The depression that his father suffered is attributed to the high number of fatalities that bomber crews experienced and the atrocities of carpet-bombing civilians. The film is also a means to explore his vision of the dissolution of traditional (pre-war) English life. (See his earlier film Jubilee to contextualize it with the 1977 punk movement of the time).
The book and to a lesser extent the film are very much in the tradition of Roland Barthes Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag's On Photography, Jeanette Winterson's 'Art Objects' and to a lesser extent John Berger's Ways of Seeing in that he has used the deeply familiar and personal as a vehicle for dialogue about art and contemporary culture.
Note: The softcover edition does not do justice to the intent, due to the removal of photographs which assist in conveying his strong sense of pathos.
