In praise of Blue – Derek Jarman’s haunt­ing reflec­tion on HIV

Twen­ty five years ago, on Sat­ur­day 19 Feb­ru­ary, 1994, the British artist and film­mak­er Derek Jar­man died from an AIDS-relat­ed illness.

A true pio­neer of British inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma, he left behind a remark­able body of work, rang­ing across long-form fea­tures, Super‑8 shorts and music videos shot for the likes of the Smiths, the Pet Shop Boys and Mar­i­anne Faithful.

Though his career was cut short, Jar­man undoubt­ed­ly left his mark. His first fea­ture, Sebas­tiane, caused out­rage upon release in 1976 for its all-Latin script and explic­it­ly gay char­ac­ters. That was fol­lowed two years lat­er by Jubilee, in which Queen Eliz­a­beth I gets tak­en on a time-trav­el­ling jour­ney to the vio­lent, chaot­ic punk era.

The best actors of Jarman’s gen­er­a­tion chose to work with him. He direct­ed Sir Lau­rence Olivier’s last film, worked with Judi Dench, Rob­bie Coltrane, Sean Bean and formed a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with a young Til­da Swinton.

Jar­man also left an impor­tant social and polit­i­cal lega­cy, being one of the first pub­lic fig­ures to dis­cuss his HIV diag­no­sis open­ly. He was an activist for a range of LGBT issues, notably his vocal oppo­si­tion to ​‘Sec­tion 28’, an amend­ment that made the ​‘pro­mo­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty’ ille­gal for local author­i­ties and is now wide­ly seen as an exam­ple of state-sup­port­ed homophobia.

These two lega­cies, artis­tic and social, meet in his final film, Blue. It con­sists of a sta­t­ic blue image, in a shade of artist Yves Klein’s ​‘Inter­na­tion­al Klein Blue’. Accom­pa­ny­ing this unmod­i­fied colour is a sound­track com­pris­ing music and nar­ra­tion from Jar­man, Swin­ton, Nigel Ter­ry and John Quentin. The nar­ra­tion mix­es rec­ol­lec­tion, poet­ry and anec­dotes from Jarman’s hos­pi­tal diaries, at a time when he was tem­porar­i­ly blind due to an AIDS-relat­ed infec­tion in his reti­na that left him able to see only in blue.

Like many oth­er Jar­man works, the way Blue was screened made it rev­o­lu­tion­ary. It wasn’t dis­played as an avant-garde piece in an art gallery, but broad­cast to the nation on Chan­nel 4 and BBC Radio 3. A 70-minute film about HIV with­out a mov­ing image was about as rad­i­cal as it got in 1993.

“In the pan­de­mo­ni­um of image, I present you with the uni­ver­sal blue. Blue, an open door to soul, an infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty becom­ing tan­gi­ble,” reads a narrator.

Jarman’s film pushed the bound­aries of pop­u­lar cin­e­ma, just as Yves Klein and oth­ers had re-defined what art could be ear­li­er in the 20^th cen­tu­ry. It offers infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties for us to imag­ine what we hear in our own way. Unlike radio, there is some­thing to look at – a point of focus – but no new image to dis­tract or guide the mind. Each view­er nec­es­sar­i­ly has a unique experience.

For Jar­man, the film was a chance to talk open­ly about HIV, which at that time was a polit­i­cal act in and of itself. ​“I want­ed to con­vey some of what I’d seen, and the dis­as­ter which I’d been liv­ing through for the past few years,” he said to the BBC before a screen­ing in Edinburgh.

As soci­ety con­tin­ues to grap­ple with how it remem­bers, or fails to remem­ber, those it lost to HIV/AIDS, the imagery has lost none of its power:

“David ran home pan­icked on the train from Water­loo, brought back exhaust­ed and uncon­scious to die that night. Ter­ry mum­bled inco­her­ent­ly into his incon­ti­nent tears. Oth­ers fad­ed like flours cut by the scythe of the blue-beard­ed reaper.

“Parched as the waters of life reced­ed, Howard turned slow­ly to stone. Pet­ri­fied day by day, his mind impris­oned in a con­crete fortress until all we could hear were his groans on the tele­phone, cir­cling the globe.”

Although intrin­si­cal­ly linked to Jar­man through the nar­ra­tion being tak­en from his hos­pi­tal diaries, the film is also imper­son­al, poet­ic and evades sim­ple cat­e­gori­sa­tion or expla­na­tion. It draws on all kinds of influ­ence, from the Odyssey to Chris­t­ian poet­ry, and weaves an expe­ri­ence rather than a story.

The film ends with the lap­ping of the sea and the chim­ing of a bell: ​“No-one will remem­ber our work. Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud, it will be scat­tered like mist that is chased by the rays of the sun. For our time is the pass­ing of a shad­ow. Our lives will run like sparks through the stub­ble. I place a del­phini­um, blue, upon your grave.”

I hope not. In the spir­it of Jar­man, reject­ing rigid ideas of plot and form, per­haps the open­ing lines are a good place to end: ​“Love is life and love lasts for­ev­er. My heart’s mem­o­ry turns to you, David, Howard, Gra­ham, Ter­ry, Paul…”