Derek Jarman's The Angelic Conversation is the purest and greatest of the filmmaker's experimental works, a lyrical, abstracted visualization of the love sonnets of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's poems, long thought to have been addressed to an anonymous young man, are read aloud on the soundtrack by Judi Dench, accompanied by the expressive ambient industrial music of Jarman's collaborators in Coil, who intersperse their chiming electronic tones with sloshing water sounds and other field recordings. This music — my own introduction to the film, since as a Coil fan I owned the soundtrack long before I ever saw the film itself — is haunting and ethereal, a perfect complement to Dench's mannered readings and the ghostly beauty of Jarman's images. The film constantly suggests the outline of a story, but it is nevertheless largely non-narrative, simply following several young men meandering through desolate, rocky terrain or performing arcane rituals with fire and reflective metals. Jarman shot the footage on 8mm film stock and then blew it up to 35mm, giving everything a fuzzy, grainy, blown-out quality, with extreme contrasts between muddy shadows and blinding flashes of light and color.
The imagery is some of Jarman's most sensual and layered, gorgeous images in which nothing much is happening beyond the play of light on skin, the jittery slow motion that animates these figures, the mutations of a flickering flame played out in closeup frame by frame. The film is an ode to the sensuality and dark beauty of love, and particularly, unsurprisingly, of gay love. Torches flare and pulse in dark caves. Men walk through scorched, foggy landscapes carrying heavy burdens on their backs like Christ. Strange rituals are performed by men whose skin is turned a pale gray by Jarman's video processing; allusions to mythology and spirituality are encoded in these bizarre, stagey interludes. Violent wrestling and struggle slowly softens into caresses and embraces, hatred becoming love. This is a stunning, deeply affecting film, a masterful translation of Shakespeare's evocative sonnets into a series of abstract vignettes whose mystery and suppleness matches the evocative lyricism of the Bard's verse.
Ed, I love Jarman and there's no one in any art form I revere more than Shakespeare, (who doesn't though?) but I'm sorry to say I have not seen this film. I lament this even more in view of the lavish praise you heap on this. This here passages are fascinating:
ReplyDelete....This music — my own introduction to the film, since as a Coil fan I owned the soundtrack long before I ever saw the film itself — is haunting and ethereal, a perfect complement to Dench's mannered readings and the ghostly beauty of Jarman's images.
"Torches flare and pulse in dark caves. Men walk through scorched, foggy landscapes carrying heavy burdens on their backs like Christ. Strange rituals are performed by men whose skin is turned a pale gray by Jarman's video processing; allusions to mythology and spirituality are encoded in these bizarre, stagey interludes."
I don't know what to say as I love the sonnets and have almost always found this director endlessly enrapturing, if difficult.
I will hunt this down. By the way you have again outdone yourself with the screen caps. Stunning.
The experimental title is available on a reasonably-priced Region 2 BFI DVD. Without having seen this I would speculate it bears some striking simularities to CARAVAGGIO, which is probably my favorite Jarman, ahead of JUBILEE and EDWARD II. But I again appreciate you lighting a fire to get moving with this essential artist.
ReplyDeleteI find that, as usual, I'm a few steps behind you. Still in the 'long-time Coil fan' mode, I have the soundtrack but have not seen the movie. For shame on me.
ReplyDeleteSam, if you like Jarman and Shakespeare, it's hard to imagine you not liking this. It's my favorite, followed closely by BLUE and CARAVAGGIO; I like the more experimental, abstracted side of his work.
ReplyDeleteJoshua, it's a great soundtrack, right? Nice to find a fellow Coil fan - what are some of your favorites? I'm still sad that there's no more new Coil music coming out, they were such a great and varied band.
It absolutely is a great soundtrack, I find myself listening to it once every eight or nine months or so just to clear the cobwebs away. Love's Secret Domain is hands down my favorite Coil album, beating out Horse Rotorvator by just a smidgen. You?
ReplyDeleteLove's Secret Domain has to be up there towards the top, for sure. "Things Happen" always really creeped me out. It's hard to pick one, but if forced I'd probably say Music to Play in the Dark Vol. 1, which is one of my most-played albums. Followed closely by Black Antlers, Moon's Milk (In Four Phases), and Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 2. Obviously I'm partial to the later dronier/ambient stuff, though I love pretty much all their albums.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, their later stuff is one of the few cases of a band going in a different direction that I like as much as the earlier stuff. I do really love Music to Play in the Dark vol 1, although I haven't gotten to vol 2 yet. They're a pretty impressive band and I find that other than Love's Secret Domain my favorites rotate depending on which one I listened to last.
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