The Last of England

Named after a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown, Jarman’s kaleidoscopic 6^th feature is a meditation on the decline of the English culture in the 1980’s. Shot in Super-8mm, with the camera often hand-held, it combines home movies of Jarman’s family, a documentary record of industrial and ecological ruin and portrays signs of struggle: a punk walks through a landscape of destruction; a baby lies in a carriage with newspapers proclaiming imminent doom; a bride lies dressed in tatters; a terrorist and a naked man embrace on a bed with bottles and guns around them; a voice on the soundtrack invokes Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. An apocalyptical and lyrical vision of Tatcher’s Britain.