Jubilee

JUBILEE is a visually charged, absurdly violent, and darkly comic tribute to British punk rock and its self-proclaimed Blank Generation. This unconventional vision from avant-garde British filmmaker Derek Jarman is a mélange of music-video sensibilities (featuring music and performances by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam and the Ants, Brian Eno, and others) and historical realism, thoroughly steeped in the anarchistic fury, fashion, and dissent of late 1970s England. A sort of postmodern fairy tale, Jarman's film revels in the nihilistic, decadent world of its motley antiheroes. In 1578, Queen Elizabeth I (Jenny Runacre) asks court magician Dee (Richard O'Brien) to give her a vision of "the shadow of her time." Dee invokes the angel Ariel (David Haughton), an androgynous gothic sprite who transports them to the Great Britain of the future--a post-Thatcherian wasteland where civilization has come to a halt. The streets are roamed by a band of violent punks, including the queen's sadistic alter ego, Bod (also played by Runacre), historian Amyl Nitrate (Malcolm McClaren's sex shop protégé, Jordan), pyromaniac Mad (Toyah Willcox), sex-obsessed actress Crabs (Little Nell), and incestuous brothers Sphinx (Karl Johnson) and Angel (Ian Charleson). Together they wreak havoc on London while competing for attention from maniacal media mogul Borgia Ginz (Orlando), who owns everything--including Buckingham Palace.