Customer Reviews

Blue: A Film By Derek Jarman

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This CD exists in two versions. The original UK release in 1993 on MUTE records has the same material as the US release a year later. The differences between the two are that the UK issue is divided into fewer tracks and is preferable due to the International Yves Klein Blue jewel case that more closely encapsulates the deep ultra-marine hue of the actual film. Either way, if you get the CD and put it at a good volume either in headphones or on a very good stereo-system, close your eyes and imagine the soft pulsations of that color being projected via the normal 35mm filmic projection of a cinema. The text is a mixture of poetry and prose from Jarman's last year, mostly culled from his diaries (published as Smiling in Slow Motion). There are several excellent reviews of the film only a google search away, so i won't rephrase them here. This 'film' has also been broadcast on BBC radio and television, so it has also tripled as radioplay and video art. The point though, is that this work has been understood as vitally important for Jarman's compatriots in the entire UK and Ireland to have the opportunity to hear and imagine it. This is a meditation on mortality and the gift of life we take so for granted. What you do with yours may be helped by St. Jarman's reflections on his life and times, which include victims of war, AIDS, homophobic violence, as well as thoughts about charity and sense perception at the most basic and vital level. I wish for an understanding and feeling world where this film had contended for an Oscar or a chance at Cannes' Palme d'Or. bit for now, it is yet to be imagined via the relative obscurity of home-listening. In a way this is fitting since BLUE is one of the most intimate experiences, cinematic or stereophonic, that I've known.

Blue is a CD that cannot help but provoke. It is a roadside accident for your ears. What is it that makes us all slow down to look-is it some deep need to understand our own mortality? Is it the visceral loss of vitality? Prepare yourself to squirm; the CD chronicles a journey down a one-way road no one can make a u-turn on. It is beautiful in it's absoluteness. Death happens every second of our life with very little fanfare or articulation, it is for this reason you must take shotgun and ride with Derek Jarman.

I bought this album used and I wasn't sure what it was exactly but I was able to preview it before I purchased it. Very beautiful and interesting spoken word with interesting ambient/instrumental music accompanying it. I'd recommend this if you like interesting narrative albums with strange sounds. The themes of the album are about AIDS and decease. Very Good Recording!