6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A kaleidoscopic view of the culture and history of director Derek Jarman's native England. Filled with rage at Margaret Thatcher's conservative reign and haunted by the continuing scourge of AIDS (with which Jarman was diagnosed), the film is both deeply personal and grimly historical, and is undoubtedly one of the most important British films of all time.
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Spencer Leigh, Gerrard McArthur, Jonny PhillipsDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.60:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
After The Last of England played the New York Film Festival in 1988, a Times critic called it "the longest and
gloomiest rock video ever made." That really is an unbeatable description. Director, prolific diarist, gay rights activist, and
noted gardener Derek Jarman's film is a barbaric yawp, a choppy, non-narrative William Burroughs-style cut-up shot on
Super-8 and edited with prodigious energy. It's at once a eulogy for a British culture long dead, a condemnation of post-WWII
patriotism, a steel-toed boot to the stomach of Thatcher-era economics, and a nightmare vision of a totalitarian future. It's
deeply personal and—at first glance—borderline incomprehensible, an assault of sped-up images overlaid with disconcerting
sound, like some hypothetically apocalyptic Keystone Cops chase sequence fed through a video feedback loop and
scored with blasts from an assault rifle.
It's most definitely not what you might call easy viewing, trading the comparatively conventional structures of
Jarman's best known feature films—the homoerotic hagiography Sebastiane, the punk rock cult classic
Jubilee, the Caravaggio biopic—for the helter-skelter metaphorical quality of his earlier Super-8 shorts. And
honestly, The Last of England would probably work better, if not as a short, then at least in slightly shorter form. It
could most likely be whittled down to an even hour and still have the same impact.
Set aside, for a moment, any conceptions you may have about "picture quality," as The Last of England was never meant to look conventionally "good." Shot on Super-8, transferred to VHS for editing, and then printed on 35mm, the film's twice-duped post-production process has left it simultaneously smeary and grainy, with occasional home video quirks like ghosting and color bleed. The texture of the picture is unlike anything else I've ever seen and defies critique based on the usual PQ considerations of clarity and color. As expected from Super-8, the footage is decidedly soft, and the transfer to VHS results in an additional loss of sharpness, giving the image a surreal quality, several times removed from reality. Some sections are presented in straight black and white, others tinted a rusty red, and a few in relatively untouched color. There are some specks and scratches on the print, but these are barely noticeably in the surrounding visual barrage. Kino's 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation seems entirely faithful to source—no obvious compression problems or other Blu-ray production issues—and that's really all there is to say here as far as a review goes. High marks for accuracy.
Kino has reproduced the film's sound mix via a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 stereo track that—like The Last of England as a whole—assaults and grates and worms its way into your brain. In short, it's effective. The narration is booming, the minimal dialogue is easily understood, and there are no major audio issues to report beyond a mild hissing that occasionally cuts through the chaos. What sound effects we hear were clearly recorded by a foley artist—not on location—and they sound noticeably dubbed-in. This, however, is all part of the grimy no-budget charm. Simon Fisher-Turner turns in an original score that's often jarring but sometimes surprisingly poignant, and the music all sounds fine, if a bit brash in the high end. There's some low-end output that I didn't expect—like the rumble of an approaching aircraft—and an appreciable sense of stereo separation. There was one moment where a particularly immersive phaser effect even made me wonder if I was listening to 5.1 mix. The only real shortcoming here is that the disc doesn't include any subtitle options for those who might need or want them.
There's not a single supplement on the disc. The top menu includes only tabs for "Play" and "Chapters."
Post-Trainspotting, the idea of heroin junkies living in filth and doping up with dirty needles has become something of a cliche. There's also the fact that Derek Jarman's bleak vision of the future ultimately never came to pass, both of which retroactively dull The Last of England's impact somewhat. Still, as a piece of personal, experimental cinema—using Eisenstein-like point/counterpoint montage to horrify and satirize—the film is still capable of mesmerizing its admittedly niche audience. "Not everyone's cup of tea" might as well be the film's tagline, as only committed fans of avant-garde, non-narrative filmmaking will want to check this one out. It's a bummer there are no extras on the disc, but Kino's Blu-ray transfer at least seems faithful to its intentionally gritty, smeary, conventionally ugly source. Recommended for the same sort of folks who might enjoy a looser, more punk take on Kenneth Anger or Maya Deren.
(Still not reliable for this title)
2017
2013
2016
1985
1982
Out 1, noli me tangere
1971
Нелюбовь / Nelyubov
2017
Limited Edition to 3000
1969
El Club
2015
1986
1983
2017
2012
Pionér
2013
Дылда / Dylda
2019
헌트 / Heon-teu
2022
1993
1991
2011
2015