Jubilee

One of the early Jarman films and one which caused much discontent among the critics. Jubilee is laden with anarchic elements and it can be interpreted as a critique of England's past and present. Set in the future in a chaotic England, it conceives ingeniously of Queen Elizabeth I as travelling through time observing the collapse of her kingdom in a landscape harassed by violence...

The cinematic pioneer of the punk era Jubilee forms an uncomfortable prediction of the unsettled Eighties and mocks humorously the nostalgia for England's "glorious past". Its blunt attitude to violence has confused many critics who seem to have missed the point: irony and cynical humour as a means of diagnosing the malaise of contemporary Britain, its paradoxes and puritanism. That there are flaws in the film it's hard to deny - mainly in terms of its theatrical stage of the story and its attempt to invert gender roles - but it is also difficult to deny the film's aesthetic innovation which still remains very impressive. Jarman's uncompromising criticism might be vulnerable at points but at that time it was something of an oasis in a milieu suffering from conventionalism. Witty, raw and imaginative Jubilee might not provide answers to the burning questions of British society. but it will certainly provide an accurate and often darkly funny description of them.

Review by Spiros Gangas
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94