I suppose I can understand why Vivienne Westwood, one of the architects of punk in the UK in the mid-1970's along with Malcolm McLaren, got upset by Derek Jarman's apocalyptic vision of a society gone to seed caused by the degenerating morals of the punk era and all that it stood for, compared to the elegance of old England, often contrasting the violence, language and destruction of a future society to the poetry of days gone by with a time travelling Queen Elizabeth I and her sage John Dee.
Westwood didn't want Jarman's Jubilee to represent the punk movement she had partially inspired and looking back on it some 45 years later it doesn't try to do that. The film is much more abstract, surreal and creative than that and uses punk as a vehicle for ideas, satire and art but doesn't claim to represent it. Sure Jarman takes a few side swipes at popular culture and what he saw as bourgeois art students creating a fake street fad which had started to implode by the time Jubilee had come out, but his themes of capitalism, exploitation, gay rights and decaying morals still hold up today in this deliciously bleak low budget dystopian extravaganza full of strange characters, music, violence and raw energy.
Future pop stars Toyah Wilcox and Adam Ant leave their mark in their screen debuts supported by Jenny Runacre, Ian Charleston and Richard O'Brien. I am not a particular fan of punk and I thought this was going to be too arty for my taste but it was a lot more enjoyable and engaging than I had anticipated which has surprisingly got more interesting and multi layered has time has gone on.
Westwood didn't want Jarman's Jubilee to represent the punk movement she had partially inspired and looking back on it some 45 years later it doesn't try to do that. The film is much more abstract, surreal and creative than that and uses punk as a vehicle for ideas, satire and art but doesn't claim to represent it. Sure Jarman takes a few side swipes at popular culture and what he saw as bourgeois art students creating a fake street fad which had started to implode by the time Jubilee had come out, but his themes of capitalism, exploitation, gay rights and decaying morals still hold up today in this deliciously bleak low budget dystopian extravaganza full of strange characters, music, violence and raw energy.
Future pop stars Toyah Wilcox and Adam Ant leave their mark in their screen debuts supported by Jenny Runacre, Ian Charleston and Richard O'Brien. I am not a particular fan of punk and I thought this was going to be too arty for my taste but it was a lot more enjoyable and engaging than I had anticipated which has surprisingly got more interesting and multi layered has time has gone on.