Mmmm

Derek Jarman - there's a director to worry the hell out of you.  I remember one film by him.  It was called Blue and I remember watching it, for what it was.  It could be pretentious nonsense I suppose but I related to it and watched it in glorious stereo.  


Here is a link to the information about the film Wiki and IMDB


What I liked were these words:


"In time,
 No one will remember our work
 Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
 And be scattered like
 Mist that is chased by the
 Rays of the sun
 For our time is the passing of a shadow
 And our lives will run like
 Sparks through the stubble. I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave"


Now it's a bit avant garde perhaps and so you stare at a screen that at first view appears to be solid blue for 80 minutes.  The thing is that in isolation and you should just immerse yourself in this film (perhaps understanding the background before you see it) and I felt that the screen was changing but it is the music and dialogue that you should listen to.  


There are many people who believe Jarman was just a pornographer.  And yet War Requiem is another piece of work to see that should leave you with a long remembered experience around the futility of war and there is the wonderful scoring of Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" and Wilfred Owen's poetry. 


I realise that much of the work I enjoy is not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination and another film that I think everyone should see perhaps just once is The Passion of the Christ directed by Mel Gibson.  I've watched it just once and it had a profound and lasting impact on me. I have bought the DVD and it sits next to my chair waiting for the right moment, when I think I can handle the emotional wrenching, the tearing at my humanity and poking my very belief system.   For what you see is the last hours of Christ's life.  You see the unimaginable torture that his own people put him through.  The passion (and I use the real meaning of that word) is probably the most brutal thing you will ever see in your life.  It is shocking and it feels as if you are part of the mob at one time and part of the crowd, unable to stop this punishment and yet drawn to it through revulsion.  I found it the most upsetting thing I thin I have ever seen in or out of the cinema.  I felt every lash and was left completely and utterly drained after watching it.  that's why it is sitting near to my seat - I'm working up the guts to see it again for if anything would be a glowing advert for Christianity, it would be this film.  I say that from a lapsed Christian point of view.


Having seen the film and its depiction of the passion it should strengthen your belief I think and like many films which attract the loony fringe - they really ought to see how close it is to the original scripture before flying off the handle.  I reckon it;s the best advertising the church could have if only they were to take their heads out of their arses and view it for what it was.  Kudos to Mel Gibson for having the brass balls to go and make this film.