I have already mentioned that the British Film Institute (the BFI) became a beacon for me in the mid seventies , offering a way of escape into the fantasy of the film world.
At that period there were a large number of well known film directors, each with different ouvres, and people would await their next release with baited breath and an expectation that has all but been lost now. One afternoon, in around early 1979, I saw that a double bill of a film maker I had not heard of before was showing at the prestigious new ‘Gate Cinema’ in Russell Square. The two films on ‘back to back’ were Sebastiane and Jubilee, by someone called Derek Jarman. I noticed that one was entirely in latin with subtitles, which piqued my interest, and also that both the films had been given an X certificate (Sebastiane in September 1976 and Jubilee in 1978 (then meaning suitable for over 18 years only). My expectations were not especially high but the themes looked interesting too. Whilst Sebastiane was like nothing I had ever seen before, with its explicit imagery and strongly homosexual overtones and strikingly beautiful scenery and score, primarily by Brian Eno and I appreciated it, it was, nevertheless, thematically essentially a piece of art house cinema and not something that was especially original in terms of its production, though filming it entirely in latin was quite a courageous thing to do: it certainly added to its mystique.
So when Jubilee began, I had no great expectations for something different, especially as the first scenes are set in the era of Queen Elizabeth the First, with her occultist John Dee. However, as those of you who have seen it will know, this doesn’t last, as she is soon transported to 1970’s England with the aid of her -sexy- spirit guide Ariel, arriving in a run down decayed London. The Queen is dead and the first Elizabeth (Jenny Runacre) moves through the social and physical decay of the city with a group of punks: Amyl Nitrate, Bod, Chaos, Crabs and Mad (played by a very young Toyah Wilcox). They live in a squat and pick up random men, including -sexy- Adam Ant in his debut role (as ‘the Kid’), who becomes signed up by Borgia Ginz, (a wonderfully kitsch Jack Birkett) the media mogul and makes a debut television appearance singing ‘Deutsche Girls’ (actually an Adam Ant track that was released four years later, as he became famous, with the appropriate lyrics ‘oh, why did you have to be so Nazi’ changed to ‘oh why did you have to be so nasty’), that they all watch. He also sings Plastic Surgery in the film (plastic surgery it’s so…. plastic…). In one scene Amyl performs (actually, mimes) an outrageous version of ‘Rule Brittania’ on stage, (a 1977 released track, sung by Suzi Pinns), which we are told is the entry for that years Eurovision song contest. We are also introduced to the two bisexual brothers, (one is Ariel, the other Sphinx in Elizabethan times) who have an incestuous relationship together, Sphinx played by Karl Johnson, Ariel played by a young Ian Charleson (who later played the lead in the very successful ‘Chariots of Fire’) who seduce Adam in one scene. Charleson, who was gay, was later diagnosed with HIV in 1986, and sadly died of AIDS-related causes in January 1990 at the age of 40.
Dee, Ariel and Elizabeth try to interpret the signs of anarchic modernity around them, before they return to the sixteenth century at the film’s end. It is a very violent film in many ways and essentially it rallies against what Jarman saw as ‘the nonsense of monarchy’ and the moral corruption of big business-obsessed Britain. Jarman was also quite critical of punk though: its obsession with fascism and the petty violence of its followers. Essentially, one wonders if the cast quite knew what they were getting themselves involved with, when they agreed to be cast in the film. It combined a range of different styles of film making, without bothering too much to blend these in together, somewhat like a magpie collecting different trinklets together, just for their colour and shapes. As a result it was however completely different in its way, from anything I had seen before and I was completely fascinated by it, blown away by the creative imagination it took to assemble something of that nature, or if you prefer, the guts and daring to produce something with such a mishmash of styles and textures. Critics struggled then (and even now) with knowing quite how to review it. I came to realise later, that I loved collage and montage in art and I think that is what I particularly connected with in this film. In later years watching it again I struggled to find exactly what had affected me so deeply about it when I first viewed it ( I came back to the cinema a few days later to watch it again, just for the craic).
I think I was blown away as much as anything by its sheer audacity, and the way in which it again, like Sebastiane in its way, creates a mythical world peopled by characters who look entirely at home in it. There was something again in it for me, in longing for a world that I could feel completely at home in. Clearly it wasn’t the land that Jarman showed us but things happened ‘as if by magic in it’ and in the Silver Jubilee year, he wove into it, this fantasy of an Elisabeth transported back and forwards in time. As is often the case, with trying to explain decades later quite why something ‘affected you’ in a particular way, you just have to say: ‘well you had to be there at the time too’; it was very much of its time. In a strange way the same things that happened with the ‘Sound Of Music’ were happening here too: yes, there are some similarities! The theme of a ‘different kind of family’, life is portrayed and explained away through music and songs, both are about escaping from reality, and both deal with themes of retribution, escape and salvation and the notion of difference. They represent ‘different ways’ of being, of existing.
Jarman was to return to these themes again and again in his work but for me he was never more powerful in his critique of contemporary Britain as in ‘Jubilee’. Punk as a movement had set out to offend with its nihilism: Jarman took that and created a powerful vision as to what might happen if that nihilism was to conquer all, how in effect it leads to a form of fascism: absolute power corrupts absolutely.
He didn’t ask us to like it or buy into it but I think he did show how it could excerpt a powerful influence on people. To me he is saying ‘Ok then, be like this but be very careful what you are playing with’. Derek, I think, had two sides to him: on the one hand a pessimism about society and just how easily changes in its fabric can bring out the worst in a nation and its people but also an essential optimism that, despite this, there was intrinsic good in people and that things ‘would turn out ok in the end’. He was undoubtedly a completely fascinating, tantalising and complex character.
I only met Derek three or four times, so I cannot claim to have known him well but a part of me wishes I had at least told him that he gave me the courage to be different. To stand apart from the pervasive normality of the late seventies and find my own way in life. I owe that man an awful lot.
For me personally, the film essentially took me to a headspace that said ‘don’t be afraid to be different’: you don’t have to conform to anyone’s expectations of you and you can go in any direction you like. It gave me the courage to give up my restrictive job in the Civil Service, recognising that, despite the fact I quite enjoyed it, it wasn’t taking me anywhere new in my head. I wanted to stop playing things safe and take some risks. The decision to do so was both enervating and a little scary. It was time to move on: I had that feeling of stepping off the train and onto a new platform once again. A kind of Mr Norris changes trains moment, if you will.
ON to Sex, love and life (The Rituals) 2.9 Soho, oh Soho: into the gay ghetto
