A Deeper Shade of Blue

FILM

Blue directed by Derek Jarman at the Harvard Film Archive February 11, 12, 13

Blue appears to be quite a fashionable name for movies this season; both Krsysztof Kieslowski and Derek Jarman have called their latest movies that. Kieslowski's film has attracted more attention, possibly because of Juliette Binoche's swan neck. Jarman's film does not seduce the spectator with a slow does not seduce the spectator with a slow strip-tease; from the beginning, it presents itself naked, refusing to be idealized or objectified. It is, in this sense, a deeper shade of blue.

Its own title adequately describes Jarman's film. Challenging notions of what cinema is, this beautiful and eerie masterpiece consists of voices and music resounding over 76 minutes of blue screen. The only visual action is that produced by your own eyes, which fill the screen with lines, shadows and patches of light.

"Blue" is not an anecdotal film, it is a disturbing experience. Jarman is a painter and director associated with the beautiful and strinking visual images in films like "The Last of England," "Caravaggio," and "Wittgenstein" (which was recently shown at the Harvard Film Archives). He has stripped his work to a bare minimum. "In the pandemonium of image," he states at one point, "I present you with the universal door of blue."

This universal door opens into a painful reality. Suffering from AIDS and faced with the cruel absurdity of losing his eyesight, Jarman has been reduced to perceiving shadows moving in a sea of blue. Visually, the film forces the viewer to asume the director's perspective.

The words of the film are those of Jarman, who recounts his experiences while being treated with DHPG--an experimental drug used on people with AIDS--as an out-patient in a London clinic. Reduced to waiting, he takes to observing those around him. In chilling detail, Jarman describes the other patients in the hospital who are also slowly going blind. An old man stumbles to a chair and despairs at the impossibility of ver reading newspaper. Lives are restructured around treatment whose side effects are a mortal disease in themselves. Each person is assigned a number, ostensibly in order to ensure confidentiality. In this way, the healthy can cope with their discomfort by distancing themselves from the sick through this denial of their identities. Fairly soon, these numbers will become statistics.

Blue, however, is neither a sermon on AIDS nor a tirade against the healthy: it is a personal meditation of enormous poetry. The director, with disturbing honesty, addresses the irreconcilable differences between those who are terminally ill and those who are not. The film forces the viewer to confront the hypocrisy surrounding AIDS. While awareness is necessary, there is a gulf separating those exhibiting a quilt and those whose names are inscribed on it. Reflecting on living with disease and on mortality, Jarman concludes, "For blue, there are no boundaries or solutions."

The film is not an easy one to view; it might alienate some spectators at the beginning. However, it quickly and forcefully draws its audience in. After their eyes adjust to the blue, the viewers willingly surrender their feelings and rejoice at the crystalline brilliance of Jarman's words. Although the text--based on the director's journal--is the most apparent component of the film, "Blue" is more than words and music: the unchanging blue screen is fundamental to the strange and powerful impact of the piece.

Besides the voice of Jarman, those of three talented actors and frequent Jarman collaborators are heard. Nigel Terry and Tilda Swinton (of Orlando fame) worked with the director in "Caravaggio," "Edward II" and "Wittgenstein." John Quentin appeared in the latter. The impressive sound-track features, among others, the musician and producer Brian Eno.

In its stark and chilling beauty, in its perceptive and honest statement, "Blue" is a desolating masterpiece by one of today's most brilliant film-makers. More than a movie, "Blue" is an experience.