di Tilda Swinton (*)
 |
| Tilda Swinton in The Last of England |
Dear Derek,
Jubilee is
out on DVD. I found a copy in Inverness and
watched it
last night. It’s as cheeky a bit of
inspired
old ham punk spunk nonsense as ever grew out
of your
brain and that’s saying something: what a buzz
it gives me
to look at it now. And what a joke:
there’s
nothing an eighth as mad bad and downright
spiritualized
being made down here these days this
side of
Beat Takeshi. There’s an interview with you at
the end of
the thing: a Face to Face .. very nice to
see that
face, I must say. Jeremy Isaacs asks
you,
last of
all, how you would like to be remembered and
you say you
would like to disappear. That you would
like to
take all your works with you and ... evaporate
...
 |
| Tilda Swinton in Caravaggio |
It’s a
funny thing, because the truth is that, here, 8 years
later, in so many ways you never could, but, it
has to be
faced, in so many others, you have. It’s snowed
since you were here and your tracks are covered.
Fortunately you made them on hard ground.
Well, I
could tell you that we got some things right,
back then,
sitting round the kitchen table in
Dungeness
projectile vomiting with the best of them:
you were
INDEED the great Thatcherite filmmaker - for
every
£200,000 film you made, real profits were seen -
by someone
or other - within at least the first 2
years, all those
royal circus brides did indeed end up
cutting
themselves out of their wedding dresses and
looking
into the camera. Alan ‘ all -film- is-
an-advertisment-
for- something’ Parker did end up
running the
BFI and dissolving its production arm,
Film 4 WAS
just a flash in the pan .. I DID have
twins of
all genders and head for the hills.
 |
| Derek Jarman e Tilda Swinton |
Do you
remember Norman Stone calling to arms about us
all in the
Sunday Times? saying ‘The Last of England’
and ‘ Sammy
and Rosie get Laid’ and ‘Raining Stones’
and i can’t remember what else were a damaging
and
misleading
series of slanders on the British character
and
profile? .. those were the days. That strictly for
export word
‘British’ .. reminds me always how on show
it
encourages us to consider ourselves.
Surely the
idea of a
national identity was always tricky enough:
strikes me
any attempt to define a national identity
for film is
not unlike trying to get a hairnet on a
jellyfish
.. and, by the by, it not unreasonable to
suggest
that those in the definition business -
boardroom
table dancers with pension plans and jobs to
lose -
might not necessarily be best equipped to blue
sky the
blue for the rest of us.
 |
| Jubilee di Derek Jarman |
Oscars: the
British are Coming? And then that Kenneth Branagh
thing with ‘Henry v’ ? Didn’t he even call his company
Renaissance Films? Well, the renaissances are rolling
themselves out pretty much yearly, now, as director
after director makes his or her first film and then
graduates to making commercials.
The fact is
- you know why - I cannot ever quite be
serious
about the British Film Industry. Its not a
phrase I
can use - could ever use - with much of a
straight
face. it’s really nothing personal. It’s
just
that I find I predate it, like I predate
the
thinking
man’s stocks and shares, and I haven’t quite
got with
the groove. Do you remember, we saw them
setting up
the stall in the empty field and the tiny
man with
the megaphone settling himself into position
behind the
imperial velvet curtain? We were there
watching
when the wily colonial entrepeneur circled
the ring at
the village fete with hot hands and did
visible
dollar sums in his head at the sight of the
handicraft table and prepared to hand over bead
necklaces
to the cottage weavers for their finger
woven items
from hand reared indigenous materials ..
It felt
like industrial films on these islands in
those
eighties were made by people who could not quite
get into
television. Or by shameless traitorous ex
patriots
who had legged it for the free world in the
colonies.
In those days, British Film, when invoked,
meant
getting proud about the Lavender Hill
Mob or
Whisky
Galore. An American/Indian partnership began to
give
Britain an exportable identity : these were the
Crabtree
and Evelyn Waugh days of ex- imperial mooning
about, when
nostalgic dreams of The Grand Tour meant
film
culture to a lot of people. Class obsession,
still,
now, the greatest stock in the trade of
industrial
cinema here, began to show a profit. Gotcha
became a
word in the national anthem. Land of banal
hope, of
Past Times glory .. still superior about the
land of the
free on the grounds that we managed to
sell London
Bridge to the desert .. who’s the colony,
though?
Then and now ..
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| Tilda Swinton |
yours:
Planet Jarmania - you were the first
person I
met who
could gossip about St Thomas Aquinas and hold
a steady
camera at the same time ..as you did at our
first
meeting ..i thought it would be good to hang
out with
you for 6 weeks .. I guess we had things to
say. Our
outfit was an internationalist brigade.
Decidedly
pre-industrial. A little loud, a lot louche.
Not always
in the best possible taste. And not quite
fit, though
it saddened and maddened us to recognise
it, for
wholesome family entertainment.
Wholesome
families were all the rage then. There was a
fashion for
a thing called ‘normal’ and there was a
plague
abroad called ‘ perversion’. There was no such
thing as
society and culture meant something to do
with a
yoghurt plant. This was before the Sunday Times
educated us
that culture means digested opinions about
marketable artistic endeavours. Things are a little
different
now: People - at least pretend to - have
an
enormous
amount of sex and tell everybody else about
it. Not
much ‘Butterflies’ on telly, except on the
nostalgia
channels. We use the word terrestrial
without a
flicker of spacethink. People cook and
decorate
their flats and celebrate the Millenium and
the opening
of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester
after
compatible cajun/Echo Park hacienda/ Alternative
Miss World
c. 1978 styles. Straight has started to
mean honest
again, getting very drunk is hilariously
funny and
smart and newsreaders would refer to today
as July
Seventeenth.
 |
| Derek Jarman |
championed
is a sort of film couture, as distinct from
the ready to wear or diffusion line cinema
that it’s
always
easier to find off the peg.. I suppose there’s
some kind
of balance to that analogy: although the
fashion
world - the business that fashion is - is at
least
cynical enough to understand the lossleading
value of
the mystique of the handstiched and the Marie
Antionette
fantasy about seamstresses losing their
eyesight in
exchange for their passionate toil over
the bugle
beads. That old garret mythology, .. it
doesn’t
half send shivers of glee down the spines of
the
uber-rich - it’s a fantasy not only of patronage
but also
some sort of sacrificial blooddrinking .. the
secret, if
not of eternal youth, then of eternal
spiritual
worth .. an artist suffered for me ..
 |
| Derek Jarman |
to irk us
then .. how disparaging it sounded ...how
sickly and
high falutin pious. and extra curricular.
For
arthouse superstar read jumbo shrimp . yet, then,
as
now, the myth prevailed that there was
only ever
one
mainstream. We were only too happy to know that
our
audience existed and to hoe the row in peace.
Nobody here
paid that much attention to us, that’s
true: noone
ever thought we might make them any money,
I suppose.
What grace that constituted . Not to be
identified
as national product.. The intergalactic
BFI. ZDF in
Germany. MIKADO in Italy. Uplink in Japan.
This was
our nation state: this was continuity. We
snuck under
the fence, looked for - and found - our
fellow
travellers elsewhere. Here’s the thought: slice
the world
longways, along its lines of sensibility,
and not
straight up and down, through its geographical
markers,
and company will be yours, young filmmaker.
company,
continuity, identity. Treason? To what?
The dead
hand of Good Taste has commenced its last
great
attempt to buy up every soul on the planet, and
from where
I’m sitting, it’s going great guns. Art is
now
indivisible from the idea of culture: culture from
heritage:
heritage from tourism: tourism from what I
saw
emblazoned recently on the window of an American
chainstore
in Glasgow as ‘the art of leisure’. That
means,
incidentally, velour lounging suits by the ton.
else..
Security never felt so much like a term of abuse.
I was in
Los Angeles earlier this year and was asked by a
jeweller’s assistant - in a hypergrand jewellry emporium on
Rodeo Drive, if the reason i declined to
wear a
stars and stripes jewelled badge on my front at
a public
event was because i was, in fact, ‘ an
Afghani
bitch’...
You may not need me to tell you about the
fight for
civilisation
afoot these days. More of the same but
worse than
even you could have imagined. Meanwhile, in
a binary
world, we on these islands cream on creamily
up a Third
Way.
Financial
returns. ... add -water- and -stir
reputations
after one appearance over the parapet ...
the elusive
second film - the developing body of work - far down
that yellow brick road ..
They go out
looking for filmmakers with the nous(e?) of one who
might consider employing halogen spotlights
in the
hopes of attracting wild cats into a suburban
garden.
They are missing the point. Don’t the know the
roulette
wheel is fixed.? The croupier is a card
sharp.? Do
these people not watch old movies? It’s the
spirited
that hold the hands in the long run, it
always was,
the low key for the long term, the
irreverent,
the cheats, the undaunted and inspired
rulebreakers,
not the goodygoody industrial types with
their
bedside manners and managerial knowhow.
It is all
done with smoke and mirrors and it always
will be.
Not with memos and corporate steering groups.
Not with
statistical evidence or test screening
audience
feed back. Don’t they know the basic laws of
being in an
audience? That we say we want to know more
about the
villain, but we don’t really: that we say we
like happy
endings but our souls droop without the
bittersweet
touch of something we might recognize - as
we bend
in from our fascinating and complex
mortal
world into
the virtual dark and back again. That we
say we want
famous faces we can recognise, but there’s
a thing a
face that we identify as an actor’s - first
and
foremost - cannot do for us that the face we might
see as that
of a person can do. It’s human beings that
are of use
to us in the figurative cinema. human
shapes and
gauchenesses and human passions. not drama
and perfect
timing and a well tuned charisma round
every bend.
art, the
meaningful devoid of meaning - is meat and drink to so
many of us looking for that dodgy wig, that moment
of awkward zing, that loose corner: where we might prize
up the carpet and uncover the rich slates of
something we might recognise as spirit underneath.
Something raw and dusty and inarticulate,
for
heaven’s sake. This is what Pasolini knew. What
Rosselini
knew. What Abbas Kiarostami knows.This is
also what Ken
Loach knows. What Andrew Kotting knows.
What Bill
Douglas knew. What Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger,
what William Blake knew. And, for that
matter,
what Caravaggio knew, painting prostitues as
madonnas
and rent boys as saints; no - madonnas as
prostitutes
and saints as rent boys .. there’s the
rub.It’s
all about rhythm: it’s all in the knees. Bring
it from
home. Bring it out from under your bed. Your
own bed.
Your own life. That’s - eventually - what you
did, Derek,
and measures your highest contribution as
an artist,
in my opinion: that you made your work out
of the soup
kitchen that was your life.
 |
| Derek Jarman |
inaugerate
this event in your name, the reason that
you count
for so much, so uniquely, to some people,
particularly
in this hidebound little place we call
home, is
that you lived so clearly the life that an
artist
lives. Your money was where your mouth was
always.
Your vocation - and here
maybe it
helped a little that you offered that special
combination
of utter self obsession with the
appearance
of the kindest Jesuit classics master in
the school
- was a spiritual one, even more than it
was
political, even more than it was artistic. And the
clarity
with which you offered up your life and the
living of
it, particularly since the epiphany - I can
call it
nothing less - of your illness, was a genius
stroke, not
only of provocation, but of grace . With
your
gesture of public confessional , both within and
without
your work- at a time when people talked fairly
openly
about setting up ostracised HIV island
communities
and others feared, not only for their
lives, but,
believe it or not, also for their jobs,
their
insurance policies, their friendships,
their
civil
rights - was made with such particular, and
characteristically
inclusive, generosity that it was
at that
point that you made an impact far outspanning
the
influence of your work. ..you made your spirit ,
your
nature, known to us - and the possibility of an
artist’s
fearlessness,a reality. And the truth of
it
is: by
defying it, you may have changed the market as
well..
 |
| Jubilee |
leave out
that he is the suicide? - who describes
himself:
‘too serious to be a dillatante, too much of
a dabbler
to be a professional .’. I use it in my
own
head from
time to time to explain to myself, if to
noone else,
my peculiar idle ways. Now I look at it
again, I
think of you and how it might well describe
you. Your
focus on the ball beyond the crowd. Your
amateur’s
enthusiasm. Your delight in process. Your
perennial
beginner’s mind.
 |
| Sebastian |
The example
of Huckleberry Finn getting a fence
painted by
having such a visibly good time doing one
post
himself that every passerby stops to join in.
and
never to
leave a place having done all you want
to do
there
You should
have been a Catholic, I sometimes think,
Del. All
those robes in ‘Caravaggio’, all those
poppies in’
War Requiem’ and again in’ The Last of
England’
and ‘ The Garden’, to say nothing of all that
buggery in the
crypt in ‘Jubilee’ ...: you and Michael
Powell have
to be the best subscribers to the
passionate
use of cardinal red in English cinema. The
secret
language of holy blood in the hands of pagans
...
longlivethepassion. Why is it that the
English
never mention
that Shakespeare was a Catholic? All
those
squeaky scrubbed classical columns. The
colourfree
reformation. Clean up the sweat and blood,
if not the
tears. Here we go again. Longlivesweat.
Longlive
secret blood. There’s more than one way to
organise a
clearance.
 |
| Sebastian |
know that
from Keith. Those old stones: you said
they’d grow
things and they did. When I think of that
nice lady
who showed us round Prospect Cottage that
day we
found it. How quiet, how pale pink her bedroom
was there.
I wonder where she went. Do you remember
that letter
we found under the carpet with the old
rubber
johnny in it: ...’ my wife is not a cold woman
but ..
you are so
lovely ..’ somesuch. Addressed to a woman
in
Vauxhall, as I remember.
And never
sent. Under the carpet with it before she
comes in ..
aah. unsent letters.
 |
| Tilda Swionton in The Last of England |
Pressburger
writing to Wendy Hiller outlining the
Archers MO
in the hopes of persuading her to work with
them on The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp:
"one; we
owe allegience to nobody except the
financial
interests which provide our money and to
them the
sole responsibilty of ensuring them a profit
not a loss.
two; every
single foot in our films is our own
responsibilty
and nobody else’s. we refuse to be
guided or
coerced by any influence but our own
judgement.
three; when
we start work on a new idea we must be a
year ahead,
not only of our competitors, but also of
the times.
a real film, from idea to universal
release,
takes a year. or more.
four, no
artist believes in escapism. and we secretly
believe
that no audience does . we have proved, at any
rate that
they will pay to see the truth, for other
reasons
than her nakedness.
five; at
any time, and particularly at the present,
the
self-respect of all collaborators, from star to
prop-man,
is sustained, or diminished, by the theme
and purpose
of the film they are working on. they
will fight
or intrigue to work on a subject they feel
is urgent or contemporary, and fight equally
hard to
avoid
working on a trivial or pointless subject. and
we agree
with them and want the best workmen with us;
and get
them. these are the main things we believe in.
they have
brought us an unbroken record of success and
a unique
position. without the one of course we should
not have
enjoyed the other very long. we are under no
illusions.
we know we are surrounded by hungry sharks.
but you
have no idea what fun it is surf-bathing, if
you have
only paddled, with a nurse holding onto your
rompers. we
hope you will come on in, the water’s
fine."
 |
| Tilda Swinton, The Last of Englan |
you belong
to, Derek: and those of us whose hearts
rise up to
the challenge fall in alongside the best
company
possible on these islands.. a long established
- and
classical national tradition, some might
argue
- of
powerful outsider artists .. pioneers .. devoted
to the idea
of making things not made before .. shapes
and
gestures new to the lexicon .. people
willing to
trust the
law that humanity and human made work is
good for
humanity .. at least that it’s better for
them to
make than not to make .. that society’s shapes
and
patterns, at heart, cannot be as profoundly
fascinating
as the humans that live within them .. and
that they
are not alone.
 |
| Tilda Swinton e Derek Jarman |
painting
extinct in Paranoia Paradise, the generation
who grew up
and forgot to lead their lives, the idea
of artists
as the world’s blood donors, history
written on
a Mandrax, fear of dandelions.. and yet,
like
Carnation
from Floris , not all the good things have
disappeared.
Maybe it’s as bad as you and I used to say it
could
possibly
get, now. Maybe it’s worse. But here we are,
the rest of
us, tilting at the sameold sameold
windmills and
spooking at the same old ghosts. and
keeping
company, all the same. It’s a rotten mess of a
shambles,
you could say. It’s driving into the curve,
at the very
least. Some would say you are well out of
it. I
reckon you would say let me attam.
 |
| Tilda Swinton in Caravaggio |
get
weaving. And that we could do with you here among
us. And I
can’t be the only one, cos look: hey, you’re
a memorial
lecture now and look: hey, stranger still:
I’m giving
it .. Are they tired of the academic view,
one
wonders, tired of the need to listen to lectures
about funding bodies and cultural diversity? What
do
they want
to hear about from me? What can I give them?
Given that
it’s you who should be the one standing
here giving
your own Memorial Lecture - not for the
first time,
your closest friends might cry - and you
are
presently otherwise engaged, or at least have left
the
building, I suppose I might as well read them this
and let
them in on the trick - that the conversation
is not done
yet .. that the company you keep with us,
when we
care to think of it, is just as strong and
empowering
as it ever was. That the example you set us
is as
simple as a logo to sell a sports shoe; less
chat, more
action, less fiscal reports, more films,
less
paralysis, more process. Less deference. More
dignity.
Less money. More work. Less rules. More
examples.
Less dependence. More love.
 |
| Tilda Swinton |
easier
thing in the world for any filmmaker to come
by: next to
vision, stamina, vocation,
resourcefulness,
comradeship, a sense of the
ridiculous,
and the long, long view, money grows on
trees.
Money is the one element that socializes a
filmmaker -
that ....ties him to the shore. Easier to
control,
easier to scupper. .. who’s for Emeric’s
surf-bathing?
Need less.
Want less. Work with straw, but work.
And the
challenges facing a film culture here?
The
possibility of filmmakers losing the use of their
own
spirits.
The
paralysis of isolated original voices
The
existence of the student loan in the place of the
student
grant
The rarity
of distributers with kamikazi vision
The habit
of patronage
Too
many conference tables
Too few
cinemas
Too little
patience
Pomp and
circumstance
The concept
of the ‘ successful’ product
The idea
that there is not enough to go around
The eye to
the main chance
The
substitution of codependence for independence
The idea
that it has to cost millions of pounds
to
make a
feature film
The idea
that there is only one way to skin a cat
WH Auden to
BBritten: ‘Goodness and beauty result from
a
combination of order and chaos,
bohemianism and
bourgeois
convention ... bohemianism alone leads to a
mad jumble
of beautiful scraps ... bourgeois convention
alone to large
unfeeling corpses.’
This is
what I miss, there being no more Derek Jarman
films:
the mess
the
vulgarity
the cant
the poetry
the edge
the
pictures
Simon
Fisher Turner’s music
the real
faces
the
intellectualism
the science
the bad
temperedness
the good
temperedness
the cheek
the
standards
the anarchy
the
gauchness
the
romanticism
the
classicism
the
optimism
the
activism
the
challenge
the
longeurs
the glee
the
playfulness
the
bumptiousness,
the
resistance
the wit
the fight
the colours
the grace
the passion
the
goodness
the beauty
Longlivemess.
Longlivepassion
Longlivecompany.
yr,
Tild
(*) grazie all'intercessione di Luca Guadagnino, Tilda Swinton regalò al manifesto questo suo scritto in memoria di Derek Jarman. L'articolo fu pubblicato sul supplemento culturale alias nel 2002
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