Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Kino Video
• VHS Release Date: November 11, 1998
• Run Time: 76 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630370459X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #176,281 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Untitled Blues, March 12, 2001

By 

"lablom" (Montreal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"I fall into a blue funk..." says the narrator about 10 minutes into this film. An understatement by far. Blue is a brooding spoken-word epic that traces the mind of a person (Jarman himself) who is in the advanced stages of AIDs. Jarman died from AIDs-related causes in 1994. The text, excerpted from Jarman's sublime book about color, CHROMA, riffs on the nature of the color blue--literally and metaphorically. These are melancholy, but not necessarily sad, meditations on the various "blues" the speaker has experienced throughout his life in general and his sickness in particular. True to the visionary nature of many of Jarman's films (The Last of England and Jubilee, for instance), Blue is a lush, experimental tour-de-force: there are no images accompanying the dialogue in this film, only an empty, glowing, aqua-marine blue screen that overwhelms the potential sadness of this film with a Tabula-Rasa like radiance. Aesthetically, this is a beautiful, but radical choice; viewers of this film will have to focus entirely on the fragmentary dialogue, without the help of images to keep distractions at bay. Politically, this choice sums up Jarman's artistic modus operandi: he is interested in work that leaves plenty of space for the viewer's imagination to fill in the narrative blanks. Jarman's empty blue screen shows the director working to not pin-down the experience of sickness and death too firmly. My only criticism of this films is that sometimes the dialogue becomes too melodramatic, undermining the understated visual component, All in all, however, Blue is an intoxicatingly morose film that, in spite of the lack of images, manages to engage the viewer throughout its duration.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, March 27, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blue [VHS] (VHS Tape)

There's nothing else in the world of cinema like this beautiful brilliant movie, this Blue. From Jubilee to Blue is an amazing arc indeed, and this, Derek Jarman's last film, is a marvel of music and color and poetry. To be with Jarman's film from the opening "O Blue come forth" to the final "I place a delphineum, blue, upon your grave" is to be in the presence of genius. He is deeply missed.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotizing.....no joke!!!, April 6, 2008

By 

KerrLines ""Movies,Music,Theatre"" (Baltimore,MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue [VHS] (VHS Tape)

As I complete watching all of Derek Jarman's films, I have to admit that "Blue" was , for me, the most undefinable of them all. You stare at an aquamarine-coloured screen for 70+ minutes and listen to the sights, sounds, feelings, experiences and memories of film director Derek Jarman who has lost his sight due to AIDS complications, and will soon die from the disease. It reminded me of the scene from Brainstorm when Louise Fletcher is suffering a fatal heart attack and records all of her brain activity to her dying body!

"Blue" was very thought provoking and very melancholic at the same time. Because I have been hypnotized before and am easily hypnotizable, I had to start this film several times, as I would nod off from staring at the blue screen. This is a very interesting choice for the late Jarman to have made. I cannot really say that I "enjoyed" it. I can say that I "experienced" it. I wondered about the movie Iris with Judi Dench, as she portrayed brilliant wordsmith-authoress Iris Murdoch as her brain slipped away from her due to Alzheimer's. Jarman's film is a meditation and observation on the "slipping-away" process. Interesting, but definitely not for everyone. I still recommend the at least one time experience of it to appease curiosity.