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by Nathan Harold Graepel When we think of good film reviews, we are reminded of the cliché phrases used to promote film--"a visual masterpiece," "a must-see film," "a great piece of filmmaking,"--none of which can accurately be used to describe this piece of audible art. While Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) is a celebration of incredible storytelling, it is certainly not achieved by using the medium of film. This piece of audible art takes its audience on an emotional roller coaster in an immersive experience, narrated by Jarman. It is a series of memory inserts that describe the traumatic experience of losing his eyesight through the crippling AIDS virus. The experiences recounted by Derek are presented to us in a dramatic manner, using incredibly descriptive terminology, powerful emotion-triggering music, and complemented with a range of sound effects that leave the audience in a constant state of unrest. We transverse the series of traumatic stories, each as depressing as the next with constant negative references to the colour blue. Blue plays the part of the antagonist is Derek Jarman’s disturbing recollection of events: "How did my friends cross the cobalt river, with what did they pay the ferryman, as they set out for the indigo shore, under this jet black sky? Some died on their feet with a backward glance, did they see death, were the hellhounds pulling a dark chariot, bruised blue black, growing dark in the absence of light did they hear the blast of trumpets?" In this abstract Jarman makes reference to all those afflicted by the AIDS epidemic and masterfully uses the colour blue and its various guises to illustrate their suffering. This is done throughout the piece and is the mechanism that allows the audience to understand his inevitable fate: "For blue there are no boundaries or solutions." During these emotion filled segments, Jarman makes constant reference to the fact that a key element of his connection to the world will be lost. Losing the visual sense, the sense that he interpreted the world through, the sense that led to the formation of his life memories, which Jarman anecdotally introduces at various intervals to remind us of what he once had and has now lost. From full colour visuals to a blank blue canvas, his vision has been taken and replaced with blue. As descriptive and immersive as Blue is, it certainly does not perform this through visual stimulation. The constant, still blue screen is monotonous and unnecessary. In fact, I found if I closed my eyes, I was able to better appreciate Blue. By closing my eyes, I was shutting out the blue-- the blue that distracted my train of thought and imagination, the blue that prevented me from forming the images that aided Jarman’s entrancing narration. While I appreciate that the purpose of Jarman’s creation and understand it to be a reflection of what he now endures, we cannot study and define it as a piece of film.
Film is defined as a sequence of moving pictures that usually tell a story or depict real life, and even when we delve into the world of experimental and abstract film, we are still describing film as something that is a series of moving images. Take Dante Brakhage’s, The Dante Quartet (1987), for instance: This piece of film certainly does not abide by conventions and norms, removing narrative and immersing the viewer in what could be interpreted as a confusing and unusual barrage of colour splashed images. But it is still film due to the conformative composition and is appreciated as ‘’Moving visual thinking,’’ in the words of R. Bruce Elder in Dante Brakhage and The Works of Energeia. If we compare the two instances of experimental film, one is clearly using the medium of moving images, images that can be witnessed using sight and then interpreted, the other a static, blue screen that simply does not conform to the fundamentals of film. While the blue screen may be representative of Jarman’s heartbreaking suffering, it does not do this through the medium of moving visuals. Film is an art form of its own right, determined by a loose set of conventions and guidelines. It is the art of marrying human emotion and thought with moving visuals that can often be complemented with the addition of sound. Blue can be defined as what we now call an audiobook or some other form of audible art and I think it is very important that we do not confuse the two, as this would do an injustice to both art forms. Artistic disciplines are defined and classified so that they can be studied, mastered, and critiqued. The ability to compare one artistic creation against another can only be done fairly if they abide by the same basic criteria--criteria that Blue does not meet. Just as one could not accurately critique a painting under the set of rules that would determine a good sculpture, I find it unfitting to analyse and interpret Derek Jarman’s Blue as film.
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