Sorry to pile on here…
Blue 1 – Love Letter 0
I guess I’ll just copy and paste what I posted in the film analysis thread for my reasoning.
Blue is a truly singular cinematic achievement, a prescient self-threnody captured on celluloid. Staring into the monochromatic rectangular image mesmerizes the viewer, not only in an emotive but also in an abstract sense. That is, the blue rectangle provides such intense purity that it stultifies the viewer emotionally, throwing the viewer into an uneasy state, not entirely unlike the one that Jarman himself faces while lying on his deathbed. And at the same time, the color blue, especially when represented in the geometric shape that we human beings refer to as a rectangle, symbolizes so many abstractions. Think of the word and its various denotative and connotative meanings. It represents nature in its most basic and vast forms in the sea and the sky. However, the word and the color can also connote a profound sense of sadness. Yet, it can also connote sexuality and cheekishness.
And Derek Jarman himself embodies all these things, an artist in touch his melancholy, but also with his sexuality and sense of humor. The absence of moving images also approximates Jarman’s loss of sight. We experience what Jarman is going through, and we empathize. This film also occupies a special place in my heart because as someone who came of age in the 90s in San Francisco Bay Area, I saw many young people wither away to most painful death from AIDS. Jarman did not go gently into that good night, and I am very glad to see that someone decided to showcase his art in this DC.
Regarding the erroneous “Match 62” tag, I’ve taken care of it. :-)
Thank you Cinethesia! :D
Derek Jarman (Blue) —1 vs Shunji Iwai (Love Letter) —0
Daniel…we still have Hitchcock, hahahaha. Speaking of Brits left in competition ;)
I have a feeling that Hitchcock won’t be around for a long time…
Love Letter 0 v Blue 1
Great to see Jarman doing so well and a great example of how diverse British cinema can be!! I am looking forward to Cat’s next selection and I am hoping Jubilee may make an appearance as it is not only my favourite Jarman, but maybe my favourite British film of all time!!!!
Love Letter well a big disappointment. I really liked Lily Chou and had high hopes but…. too sentimental, rather silly plot and way too long. The film may have worked better in animation and reminded me of Takahata’s Only Yesterday.
Some parts of the film were laughable like….
Really do the Japanese post know everyone’s names and if the letter is not addressed with that name they don’t post the letter. The Royal Mail could learn from this I am getting tons of mail each week addressed to former owners and it really gets on my nerves!!
And really do Japanese school kids play games to find names in library book cards. When I was school I was too busy smoking out the back, beating people up for their lunch money or smuggling in my Dad’s bottle of Jack Daniels! (Well maybe we are less behaved here in England :))
Daniel…we still have Hitchcock, hahahaha. Speaking of Brits left in competition
He made himself an American citizen, therefore I stand by my first statement : )
Derek Jarman (Blue) 1 vs Shunji Iwai (Love Letter) 0
“I caught myself looking at shoes in a shop window. I thought of going in and buying a pair, but stopped myself. The shoes I am wearing at the moment should be sufficient to walk me out of life.” ~ Derek Jarman
“Bury me in my sandy beach crocs.” ~ my kupuna (grandfather)Derek Jarman (Blue) – 1 vs Shinji Iwai (Love Letter) – 0
I wasn’t as thrilled with Blue as most voters were and I find it hard to evaluate as a “film” as it’s more of an art installation or is it a Hans Christian Andersen audio book? I found myself appreciating and connecting with the poetry and diary entries more when I read the transcripts rather than hearing the whimsical fairy tale-esque narration and staring at a blue screen for over an hour. It’s not that I didn’t like Blue it’s just that there are a lot of films in this cup that I would have voted for over it, but Love Letter is not one of them. Hanna and Alice is the only other film I’ve seen from Iwai and it too is a pretty corny teen genre film, but it at least left me with something to take away from it, while Love Letter on the other hand felt like a waste of time.
Derek Jarman (Blue) 1 vs Shinji Iwai (Love Letter) 0
Derek Jarman (Blue) —1 vs Shinji Iwai (Love Letter) —0
The lesser of two evils I guess. :/
Wow, Ally…you’re very demanding towards the lesser-known directors :P
I may as well vote myself:
Blue 0 vs Love Letter 1
You know….I just can’t help but giving a heads up to Love Letter…I didn’t expect this beating at all as much as I didn’t expect to exclaim Blue as my third favorite Jarman!!! (my thoughts are in the review thread, these types of threads by the way could be helpful to people who didn’t understand the said films)
So Love Letter may be old-fashioned in its “dead love syndrome” or even the “unrequited” motives of past comebacks like with the girl’s highschool roots or the communication / connection of her depression…sorry, I’m ranting but this film really moved me, maybe because I’m still “young and fool”, ha. I’ll take this kind of romance though compared to all those silly indie U.S. cinema propagandas like Juno and such.
Sorry Cat but 1 vote for Iwai is pretty harsh ;)
“I have a feeling that Hitchcock won’t be around for a long time…”
If I am to face Hitchcock, I’m gonna squash him ;)
DIMITRIS!
20 – 2 for Jarman.
Go England :)
You know I think Kenji counted wrong earlier. I believe the vote is actually 21-1
Nah, the first vote for Iwai had his name first, rather than Jarman’s. Made the same mistake myself before I checked again.
Blue — 0 vs Love Letter — 1
Sanjuro voted for Love Letter
20 – 3 Blue
And really do Japanese school kids play games to find names in library book cards. When I was school I was too busy smoking out the back, beating people up for their lunch money or smuggling in my Dad’s bottle of Jack Daniels! (Well maybe we are less behaved here in England :))
Oh I see Cyclo. You were one of the COOL kids.
Derek Jarman (Blue) 0 – Suinji Iwai (Love Letter) 1
Can’t really say I enjoyed either one. Didn’t really like Iwai’s Lily Chou-Chou either, so I wasn’t surprised. The same kind of thing here.
Every second counts and this girl is freezing to death so we need to figure out the best way to get her to the hospital. If we wait for the ambulance it will take one hour. If we walk in the snow it will take 40 minutes. Now to be sure we make the right decision, let’s debate about it for twenty minutes. Ok, let’s decide to walk in the snow. But now that we’ve spent so much time debating and the abulance has been on it’s way for twenty minutes, it will be just as long for us to wait for the ambulance and we won’t have to take the girl who is freezing to death out into the freezing cold weather. Aw fuck it. We already decided. Let’s walk there.
I keep wanting to say something really snarky about Blue, but I’m holding back because I probably can’t really defend myself very well. It’s just this urge.
I will exclude myself from voting this time. Im having trouble staring at a blue screen for more than 20 minutes. I tried listening to it at night, it was cooler that way (without the blue screen) but then I fell asleep..oh well..
Man, Risselada, you’re also demanding like Ally, hahaha. ;)
“Marco Polo stops and sits on a lapis throne by the River Oxus”
When i was a student on placement at a day centre for people with visual disabilities- a very happy experience and i used to do poetry readings for the “blind newspaper” cassette-, i used to visit a woman who was deaf and blind. Herzog fails to capture any real sense of intimacy in his film on the subject, Jarman shows that you don’t need great visual effects for a great film, but a film’s soul, its spirit is what matters, and he helps us feel blindness. For all the time with painful medical treatment this is an uplifting film, beautiful and with wonderful flights of imagination, and the lovely blue always as a positive comment on life with the warmth and security of memories. I was thinking maybe it’s a pity we can’t touch what’s in a film the way you touch to communicate with a deaf-blind person, but Jarman takes us deep inside his mind, and what an excellent place it is. I think it would have been better still immersed in a tub in a room devoid of other sensory distractions, and surrounded by the sense of blue. Thumbs up for the music too and from the first crystal sounds we’re invited into something special and rare. And Jarman has India and the Taj Mahal! Better still. Pearl fishers in azure seas, coral harbours, yes here we have an adventurer
i was also thinking when he smiled at “Cocteau” and received one sweetly in return that it’s a pity homophobia hurts interactions between heterosexual males too. And what a terrible response there was to AIDS, seen as God’s punishment for queers. So much suffering that might have been prevented by more enlightened attitudes.
As well as Dylan Thomas’ Do Not Go Gentle, mentioned by Blue (fitting) the Custodian, i was also reminded of Milton’s On his Blindness; Jarman’s feels like an important work in such a tradition, and takes us deep into the feelings of his condition, with a sense of calm Buddhist spirituality alongside mundane and technological appliances, the daily grind for survival
fine poetry too:
“In time
No one will remember our work
Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud
And be scattered like
Mist that is chased by the
Rays of the sun
For our time is the passing of a shadow
And our lives will run like
Sparks through the stubble.
—
This work should be seen and heard and remembered
“Really do the Japanese post know everyone’s names and if the letter is not addressed with that name they don’t post the letter”
I think Akiba (sorry if i got the name wrong) was referring to the name plate outside the house where supposed if it was “Yamada” instead of “Fujii” they certainly won’t deliver it to the house. I suppose Japanese homes have this name plate outside their houses… :p
edit: but the royal mail might not care anyways…soo… (heh)
Blue 1 – Love Letter 0
Realising that I would stare at a blue screen for 80 minutes didn’t exactly thrill me, and the film certainly did not, but it was a nice enough experience. I can’t quite get past the blueness, so my vote for Jarman tells more about my lacking appreciation for Love Letter.
Derek Jarman (Blue) – 1 vs Shinji Iwai (Love Letter) – 0
Not so much a vote for Blue as a vote for not wanting to wake up in the middle of the night finding a knife protruding from my chest and a young woman laughing maniacally over my anguish.
Blue 1 – Love Letter 0
Luckily Blue was the better film so I can vote for my survival without a guilty conscience.
What are you talking about Cecil?? A knife????
Sanjuro
Dimitris, how about a vote against Blue for the exclusion of the non-English speaking world?
Bit of a stretch perhaps…