The Last Of England

The Last of England is a (1987) British film directed by Derek Jarman. It is a poetic, rather than realistic, depiction of what Jarman felt was the loss of traditional English culture in the 1980s. It is named after a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown. Jarman wrote a book to accompany the film, which deals more explicitly with the relationship he had with his father, who was a Lancaster bomber pilot in the Second World War. J... more

The Last of England is a (1987) British film directed by Derek Jarman. It is a poetic, rather than realistic, depiction of what Jarman felt was the loss of traditional English culture in the 1980s. It is named after a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown. Jarman wrote a book to accompany the film, which deals more explicitly with the relationship he had with his father, who was a Lancaster bomber pilot in the Second World War. Jarman used the impact of his father's despair, depression and violence on his own artistic vision. The depression that his father suffered is attributed to the high number of fatalities that bomber crews experienced and the carpet-bombing civilians. The film is also a means to explore his vision of the dissolution of traditional (pre-war) English life. (See his earlier film Jubilee to contextualize it with the 1977 punk movement of the time). The book and to a lesser extent the film are very much in the tradition of Roland Barthes Camera... less