Derek

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Movie Details

• Genre: Documentary
• Release Date: 0000-00-00
• Running Time: 76 min.
• Director: Isaac Julien
• Cast:
• Producer:
• Writer:
• Distributor:
• Official Site: Derek Official Site

Neatly dodging the standard pitfalls of the biographical documentary, Isaac Julien’s Derek has only two voices to steer it: subject Derek Jarman (mostly from an apparently exhaustive interview conducted by fellow cult-fave film director Bernard Rose in 1990) and his frequent star/muse Tilda Swinton. In laying out the importance—political and aesthetic—of Jarman’s ground-breaking, defiantly queer oeuvre, Julien avoids those twin banes: the irrelevant friend and the hagiographic scholar. Instead, a wonderfully unsparing Jarman discusses with disarming frankness everything from having public sex in the ’80s to why he was a cinematic pioneer. The generous sprinkling of clips should orient newcomers; Julien wisely prioritizes Jarman’s features and, on an equal plane, his video for the Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s A Sin.” Regardless of how you feel about Jarman’s work, it’s a fascinating ride, complete with name-dropping (Tennessee Williams stops by for a party) and a journey through London’s hip scene, late-’60s-to-’80s version. Oddly enough, it’s Swinton who, for once in her life, is the worst thing in the film: Stalking through periodically, she offers overwrought soundbites about how focus-grouping, arbitrary notions of “taste” and “high culture,” and mass-market filmmaking is destroying art. Mighty big talk for someone who’s been in both Constantine and The Chronicles of Narnia.