The Remembrance Sunday screening of War Requiem has been and gone. John Hurt and Terence Davies were in attendance, as were friends and family of the filmmakers by the looks of things, which was cute.
I’d not seen the film before, so stared transfixed at the new transfer on the big screen, with its even bigger sound. (Jarman made his actors, Tilda Swinton, Sean Bean and Nathaniel Parker slaves to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, an epic score commissioned in 1962 to lament the waste of war.)
The film’s producer, Don Boyd, led the post-screening discussion, expressing his delight at seeing people turn up for the film 20 years after it was made. Though Jarman would have been blown away by the turn-out, his merriment would have been marred by Britain’s dogged determination to keep fighting wars, Boyd said.
The film, a montage of metaphorical images that recreates Wilfred Owens’ poems to Britten’s score, is avowedly humanist and pacifist. In addition to scenes of a distraught Tilda Swinton playing a nurse and Owen’s bride, Jarman laces hardcore footage of real soldiers from a variety of wars dying on screen. Not for the faint hearted, the film is unique and, although inspiring, not easy to sit through.
I, however, was kind of frustrated at the turn out, and at 24, was one of the youngest in attendance.
Someone had brought their child along, but the majority of the audience was largely 40 and over. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great, and kind of rare, to get a film that draws so diverse an age range as to include children as well as octogenarians, but I felt there was a generation missing.
Where were my contemporaries; Generation X or whatever Douglas Coupland wants to call us?
I started to wonder, when certain people call Derek Jarman one of Britain’s best film talents, is it just a branch of the art establishment talking to themselves? And then I thought, well, even if Jarman’s not your thing (he is understandably niche), isn’t my generation interested in seeing Lawrence Olivier’s last screen performance; Swinton in her formative acting years; and the early cinematography of Seamus McGarvey?
I was getting preachy to a friend when she simply suggested that maybe the timing was just wrong, and that a 2pm start on a Sunday is too bruising on the weekend’s final hangover.
Well, fair enough, I suppose. So for those still interested, the re-mastered DVD has just been released, with a soundtrack so spot on you don’t even need to watch the film.
My generation can just stick it on and turn its back, see if I care.
(How I wish I didn’t care.)
