Glitterbox: Derek Jarman (Caravaggio / Wittgenstein / The Angelic Conversation / Blue / Glitterbug)

Product Description

This 4 DVD set boasts 2 of Jarman's most accomplished arthouse features (Caravaggio and Wittgenstein) and 2 of his most personal and avant-garde works (Blue and the Angelic Conversation).

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Glitterbox, with its extra film, Glitterbug, compiled by Derek Jarman's friends following his death, is an especially personal tribute to this idiosyncratic director, writer, and artist. Renowned for his outspoken dedication and experimental portrayals of politically radical heroes, Jarman's films challenge the conventions of narrative filmmaking and expand narrow definitions of sexuality. This boxed set contains The Angelic Conversation (1985), Caravaggio (1986), Wittgenstein (1993), and Blue (1993), which, viewed together, clarify Jarman's preoccupation with the ways language and imagery intertwines or demand separation. Each film contains heavy theatricality, unabashed passion, poetic screenwriting, and a finely tuned color palette, lending the works extreme drama that is an acquired taste. In The Angelic Conversation, a young Morrissey-type searches longingly for love until he finds his possible angel in the form of another hunky sensitive guy. The super-8 footage is romanticized by Judi Dench's reading of certain Shakespearean sonnets that question life's meaning, over a moody, ambient soundtrack by Coil. Caravaggio is an eccentric portrayal of the artist, Michelangelo di Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), embroiled in a hot love triangle between figure model Ranuccio (Sean Bean), and Lena (Tilda Swinton). Far from a conventional biopic, the film capitalizes on Caravaggio's maniacal reputation, with lurid decadence and emotionally weighty scenes throughout. Wittgenstein, co-written by Terry Eagleton, also takes liberties with its depiction of this famed philosopher, played by Karl Johnson. Filmed entirely against a black backdrop, the movie focuses on the thinker's sexual identity crisis, throughout childhood, then as he makes academic headway at Cambridge. Blue, filmed right before Jarman's death as an expression of his fears and shock at his loss of eye, is 76 minutes of blue screen, which stirringly comes alive as Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry read from Jarman's journals his musings about the color, against a soundtrack of ticking clocks and more composed by Eno, Momus, and Simon Fisher-Turner.

Extras on each disc, including multitudinous interviews with Jarman's friends, the man himself, and a short film called "The Clearing" (1994), in which Jarman silently acts, are plentiful and great. But the real extra gem here is Glitterbug, a fifty-minute compilation of Jarman's unused home film and video footage, set to Brian Eno music. Filmed on sets, in artist's studios, at parties, fashion shows, and on travel excursions, Glitterbug is a visual diary of Jarman's inspirations. Moreover, as reference material it establishes his aesthetic sensibilities, his tastes for the lavish, the punk, and for other humans fully dedicated to art. --Trinie Dalton