Customer Reviews

Derek Jarman Collection (Sebastiane / The Tempest / War Requiem / Derek)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After searching for this film for years, I have finally managed to see it. What a beautiful work! It's all in black and white, incorporating real footage from WWI, with only Laurence Olivier reading Wilfred Owen's superb poetry and Benjamin Britten's powerful music; there is no audible dialogue.

This is a raging -- and yet, at times, delicate -- cry against war and all its terrible waste.

In this last screen role, Olivier plays the Unknown Soldier. Nathaniel Parker -- conversely, in his first screen role -- plays the Soldier/Poet (Wilfred Owen) movingly. Tilda Swinton as the nurse is hauntingly lovely; and you'll also see Sean Bean as a German soldier, and Patricia Hayes as the British mother.

Despite the subject matter and the footage, I found this an extremely poetic vision, and quite brilliant. It certainly takes more than one viewing to take it all in. Breathtaking!

This film version puts a visual to the 1963 recording of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The music is conducted by Britten, his partner Peter Pears sings the tenor lead, and it also features the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. The nationality of the soloists was itself part of Britten's pacifist message in post-WWII Europe, and Britten's recording of the War Requiem is still considered at least one of the best versions ever recorded, if not the best.

The War Requiem combines the standard Latin text for a Catholic requiem mass with the English-language poetry of Wilfred Owen, who was serving in the British army when he was killed exactly one week before the end of World War I. His poems capture the senselessness and pain of war, particularly of the terrible trench warfare of the time.

Derek Jarman has created a visual experience that respects and is true to the spirit of the music. Owen's poetry and Britten's music are both very expressive, providing opportunities for a strong visual narrative to communicate the tragedy of the music and the poetry on another dimension.

One good example is in the Offertorium section, where Owen's powerful poetic imagery speculates that WWI was the result of the Biblical Abraham going ahead and in fact killing his son Isaac, despite the pleas of the angel to set him free. This is one scene that lends itself to an almost literal adaption. However, the majority of the visuals build on mood rather than concrete narrative. Taking its cue from Owen's poetry, the visuals are in a WWI setting. I thought the ending of the film was worthy of the amazing ending of the music.

Tilda Swinton's performance -- wordless, like all performances in the film -- is stunning. An aged Sir Laurence Olivier makes an appearance as a modern-day (1980s) WWI veteran. Sean Bean, best known as "Boromir" in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, turns in a good performance as a German soldier.

I only have one real complaint about the DVD. It should have captions. I found myself going to the internet and following along in the libretto on my laptop while watching, which detracted from the film experience. This could easily be remedied with subtitles.

The film is definitely worth seeing, but I still believe the underlying music is more important than this film version. The music gets five stars, the film gets four, and the captionless DVD gets two.

A 1-1/2 hour music video to one of the greatest--if not THE greatest--choral works of the 20th century--its only equal is Tippett's "A Child of Our Time." Gorgeous cast, great to see Sir Larry's final performance along with Tilda Swinton, Boromir and King Arthur. Full marks to Jarman for his passion and commitment. Unfortunately, as passion sometimes does, it rather oversteps the mark. In fact, overleaps it, augmenting Britten and Owen's quiet subtlety with a sledgehammer used to beat the audience over the head. There are many effective moments--Swinton's face is built for tragedy--but it's also the kind of passion that unlike the "Requiem" itself dates quickly, as this already has. I usually listen to the music without watching the images, though it's nice to have them there to pound the message home.

"The Derek Jarman Collection" is a box set containing four Jarman films. Jarman's background was influenced by both the stuffy British public school system and the intellectual freedom of the 1960's. He believed that art should be embedded in radical politics, and his canon of work combines political statements, avant garde styles, personal confessions, and reworkings of religious histories.
In "War Requiem" (1989), Jarman interprets the six movements of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" in graphic visuals and dialogue-free tableaus illustrating war's futility, sacrifice, and waste.
"The Tempest" (1979) is a version of Shakespeare's comedy that mixes Hollywood glamor, high camp, and gothic horror. The film's finale is unforgettable. Jarman designs and choreographs a wedding feast as a full-scale production number with Elisabeth Welch wafting her way through a chorus of hunky sailors while she belts out "Stormy Weather." "Sebastiane" (1976) is a homoerotic retelling of the saga of the martyred Saint Sebastian, and "Derek" (2008) is a documentary on Jarman, who died in 1994. Extras include three of Jarman's short films and the text of the original press kit for "The Tempest."

This movie is quite stirring, as you can see by the title. It may disturb you some, but that is what war is about.

This movie is OK. Britten's easy-way-out recitative style is irksome as it always is in his operas, and the scenes with the fat Jewish businessmen and the much too prolonged character study of the redhead braiding her hair don't wear well with time. The latter comes across as sentimentality over-extended with its bizarre hand movements and makes one think of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti-westerns where we see somebody stare at somebody else for five minutes at a time. And after awhile the constant slow-motion movements of the actors get on one's nerves. Apparently someone thought that individuals moving in slow motion, especially while moving their hands, deserve more pity than those who do not. They tried too hard when they filmed this one.
A remark on the singing. A fatal flaw exists in much of opera, especially evident with the high-pitched female voice, and it is remarkable that the public tolerates the tradition. This is the custom of singing in such a way that the words are unintelligible. I can understand very few of the words in Britten's War Requiem because the enunciation of the singers is so poor. What makes this tradition especially irritating is the fact that they must know the words cannot be understood, even by native speakers, yet they keep doing it. As a result there is no way to follow the story unless one reads along. But if one cannot understand the words as they are sung, and must read a story, there is no use in using words in song to begin with.

I appeared in this, and other Derek Jarman films, but have never seen them..

meaning WARFARE ~ interesting concept using the original recorded performance.

Lots of bad teeth throughout . reminding us of the British Dentistry failure, would have loved to have seen Spike Milligan's version.

This one can be seen as awfully pretentious and very homosexual - but then - what is not these days?

Poor WW1 nurthes ... always living in hope dealing with the utter horror of truly faceless soldiers entering the killing machines without choice and conscience.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.