Derek Jarman's Angelic Conversations

Only just got this book and wanted to be the first to review. I met Derek Jarman a few times and have always loved his work particularly his movies and books. It was his uncompromising vision and the way he fashioned his own life that made seem him so interesting. I have watched his movies, over and over again, and always find myself returning to his wonderful books that weave memories, thoughts and ideas on the sixties, seventies, eighties and early nineties. The movies though are often difficult to understand, and the writings of Jarman, never really helped me piece together his cinematic output as a whole. This is where this book comes in, Jim Ellis obviously loves his subject and he has thoroughly absorbed all of Jarman's considerable body of work. The genius of this study is by relating each individual movie to prevailing and shifting avant-garde ideas on art, politics and society, Ellis convincingly shows how the body of work was never meant to communicate a single artistic or philosophical vision. Each movie is analysed as a type of performance in which the creative process and viewing experience were conceived together as situated in a particular time and space. In this way, Ellis connects Jarman with a romantic tradition which prides art as a spiritual and transformative force. It is through art that man connects with his true polymorphous nature and each film is an exploration of this nature for performers and audience. All of the past lives in the present and the movies explore how we can draw inspiration from historical texts and mythology "Elizabethan England is our cultural Arcadia, as Shakespeare is the essential pivot of our culture" (Ellis quotes Jarman).This is a brilliant cultural study and gives the reader a greater appreciation of his genius while also giving us the material to draw our own conclusions on whether Jarman's films really are transformative. My own view, is that they reflect Jarman's romantic vision, and disenchantment with the world, and do not pretend to offer us a practical, aesthetic or spiritual way out. The movies reflect his own articulated unconscious, drawn from a lifetime of artistic and literary endeavour, and it is this very lyricism that makes his work so interesting.'The gentle poet pauses near the morning garden, ancient nature stirs in her integral happiness. Is it the heart of myth that now remakes itself in him? Mouth two fingers form the flute - but the kiss was even closer' (Rilke, French Poems).