Blue

In the pandemonium of image I present you with the universal blue.  Blue is an open book to souls.  An infinite possibility become tangible. 

It's a bold thing, calling 1993's BLUE a motion picture.   It is seventy-nine minutes of a single shot of a blue screen.   Specifically, International Klein Blue, deriving its hue from the pigment ultramarine.  This may sound like an Andy Warhol piece, but is in fact the creation of director Derek Jarman, who was in the twilight of his life, passing away only a few months after this film's release due to complications of the AIDS virus.  

BLUE has audio.  Much of it is provided by Jarman, skipping between flights of fancy and recounts of his visits to doctors' offices and hospitals.  Beautifully composed sentences that reveal a gifted wordsmith and storyteller.  Blue is personified, getting into scuffles with other colors.  Someone's beard is described as blue.  Blue is mainly all Jarman was able to see in his final months, having first lost the peripheral vision in his right eye and then only recognizing shades of the titular color.  He  quotes the Apocrypha .  His voice is both soothing and eerie, which can describe this film as well.  

The image is the prison of your soul.

There are other voices on the soundtrack.  Frequent collaborators such as Tilda Swinton and Nigel Terry.  There is music, some of which was composed by Brian Eno.  Sound effects.  All contributing to something like a radio play, perhaps akin to a segment on This American Life.  BBC Radio 3 did in fact broadcast it.  I've read that the audio portion was released on compact disc. 

So why sit and watch an unchanging color, rather than just listening to the artists' fascinating muses and sobering documents? Forming your own images? One take is that Jarman, who created some interesting cinema in his fifty two years, was still putting his vision on screen.  And all that was left was the color blue, just as he saw it.  I can go with that. 

I found that my mind's eye imagery melded with the unshifting blue, perhaps gave it a palate upon which to play.  A filter for Jarman's recollections of old friends and lovers.  Wry humor.  Rages against homophobia.  Horror stories of needles and drug side effects.  Deeply moving recognizance of impending death.  

I watched and listened to BLUE alone in a darkened room.  It was an unsettling experience.  Almost as if someone was speaking ominously from one of its corners, not directly to me.  Other times like an ethereal figure in a celestial height, recalling his mortal coil.  The thoughts leading toward the inevitable.  Dark words.  The effect reminded me of Act III of Our Town, as the deceased comment on their lives.  As with Thornton Wilder's play, BLUE will give viewers pause to appreciate every breath.  Never in some trite, greeting card fashion.  This is a unique, challenging film.

For blue, there are no boundaries or solutions.