I'm not sure how to describe what changed for me when I rewatched Jubilee last night. I had seen it a number of times before but had not really connected with it, which I think I managed to do on my last viewing. I'm starting to worry that I'm just becoming a contrarian in my old age, trying desperately to find some worth in films reviled by everyone else, but I honestly picked up the DVD of Jubilee last night not expecting to find anything more than I'd found on previous viewings, and I must have seen the film four or five times over the years through previous television showings and when I first watched the Criterion. I don't really expect to change anyone's mind about the film, more just to note what I enjoyed more this time around.
I remember the first few times I saw the film I was almost overwhelmed by the sex and violence - I didn't exactly find it shocking, it was more that instead of demonstrating or adding to a portrait of an anarchistic world they seemed to overwhelm the film too much and became about the act itself as a little set piece moment rather than as a scene in an ongoing film. I remembered the murder of Lounge Lizard or the molotov coktail thrown at the door, or the waitress being wrestled to the floor and sprayed with ketchup, but more as the events themselves rather than for how they connected to the narrative.
My appreciation of the film on earlier viewings became based more on various isolated sequences rather than the way they worked in the film as a whole, and in addition to the more 'shocking' scenes, I have the feeling that the film is structured as a kind of perverse musical with big production numbers such as the Rule Britannia, Plastic Surgery, Jerusalem, Paranoia Paradise and the strangely compelling 'fire ballet' sequences peppered throughout the film. (There are also a few connections to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, from Amyl's motto "Don't dream it, be it" to both Little Nell and Richard O'Brien in the cast). I would agree with zedz that this isn't exactly a punk film, punk was used in it but for Jarman's own purposes, not in a celebratory way of showing how 'great' the music was - indeed while it is a musical, it seems to be one which hates the characters who perform the music - I particularly liked Lounge Lizard's half-remembered singalong in his flat to a video of himself on the television or the way that Kid, after singing Plastic Surgery, responds to the first thing someone says to him by repeating the lyrics from his song, suggesting he is so drained by his performance that he has lost track of where he is and what he is doing, which either suggests he is so committed to his song he is caught up in it, or alternatively that the song doesn't mean anything and he is just responding in a brain dead manner to whatever questions he is asked, repeating the 'controversial' lyrics in his song without much idea of why they are controversial, just that they seem to upset people! Both could be seen as criticisms of the posturing attitude of punk itself, deeply offensive only in a middle-class manner - only getting a shocked response from the most prudish members of the audience who have never heard swearing or anti-monarchist sentiments expressed in public before! (While the upper class manipulates and commodifies the controversy and the working class just shrugs in a 'seen and heard it all before' manner and go back to discussing their private lives with each other over a game of bingo!)
The musical and 'extreme' scenes were the sequences that most stood out to me on previous viewings, but I finally seemed to look at the film as a whole last night and found things to enjoy in the way the film is structured as well.
I particularly liked the way that Jenny Runacre, playing both Elizabeth I and Bod, is introduced in her role as Bod running down a conservatively dressed, dowdy looking lady of an older generation, strangling her and stealing what is later revealed to be a crown. This is one of the earliest scenes set in the anarchic modern world following the period scene with Queen Elizabeth, and I get the impression that this scene is meant to immediately confront the time travelling monach with one of her regal successors (maybe Elizabeth II herself?(!)) being chased through a wasteland before being murdered for her crown, which in this lawless society doesn't represent power or have any great social significance, but is little more than an ostentatious trinket that Bod can wear to play at being a member of a different world with different values - much as Amyl Nitrate plays at being Britannia, the way that Amyl and Mad have a sword fight near the end of the film (an outdated form of combat, with all the notions of fighting for honour and a noble purpose that having a duel might imply), or the way Amyl is writing her own history of the world to glorify the age in which she is living - a history of how the world woke up to the futility of their actions and let society collapse into glorious anarchy (which has shades of 1984 in the way things that don't fit into this worldview are omitted as Amyl speaks about wishing to compress history more and more until all you need to know is written on a recreational drug ("a
mandrax"), which seems to suggest the rewriting, co-opting and forgetting of history in order to passify).
It seemed that the dingy warehouse that the gang are shown in is the twisted equivalent of a royal court, with Bod as the newly crowned Queen; Amyl as the intellect behind the figurehead, seeming to be aloof from the others and more aware of the wider world than her hedonistic companions driven only by a need to satisfy their short-term impulses; Mad as the psychotic brawn of the gang; Viv as the court artist; Chaos of course as the maid; Angel and Sphinx as the court concubines and maybe Crabs as the jester!
Their interactions with Borgia Ginz's record producer, as both Mad and Amyl audition for him and Crabs tries to promote the Kid, suggest that this corrupted version of royalty is deeply subservient to the all-powerful influence of the media (perhaps similar to the way the Crown in times past, despite its seeming control over the country, was never more powerful than the Church and its representatives were?)
(I know I shouldn't stereotype people, but I'll never think of a media boss without thinking of the crazed, stentorian Borgia Ginz! All those reality pop star shows would be much better with him as one of the judges! I'd also like to imagine someone like Rupert Murdoch being a similar insanely cackling character, just with an Australian accent!)
It makes the way that the gang seem to pick the people they kill from the performers they see on the music shows on television quite funny! The murders also seem less arbitrary but a form of political machination, a small way of showing they don't respect Ginz (and the way he isn't picking any of their songs up for success but is instead signing artists like Happy Days and Lounge Lizard) by killing his talent! Of course it is inevitable that they all end up in cahoots together at the end, petty squabbles forgotten as they bask in their success in a giant mansion in a English county surrounded by armed guards against the anarchy that they fostered to make themselves successful! (I thought the addition of a decrepit and somewhat bewildered Hitler to their self-aggrandising group is a funny moment, as even he seems to be a little shocked by how bizarre and extreme their actions are!)
While the core of the group, Amyl, Mad and Bod, all eventually reap the rewards of their lifestyle the rest of their gang seem much more expendable, probably because they have other interests that lie beyond those three. For example Crabs being sex obsessed jumps at every man she sees, but seems to be the kiss of death for all of them! Happy Days seems to be someone she is just using partly so the gang can kill him, but her sad reaction as she, Mad and Bod are dumping the body suggests she is looking for something more than casual sex, which is her downfall, as that is all that is left in this world. She spends the largest amount of the film with Kid (Adam Ant), yet seems to tire of him (not soon enough to prevent him being marked for death though, as he is glassed by a policeman!) and takes up with one of the policemen who she finaly seems to have a connection with (despite their first meeting taking the form of a parody of a jeans commercial set in a laundrette!), yet ironically he is almost immediately killed by Bod and Mad in retribution for the attack on Kid! While I find it funny, it is also a shame for Crabs - the poor girl just can't catch a break!
The other group of characters that break away from the main trio of Mad, Amyl and Bod are Viv, Angel and Sphinx. I've often wondered if it was intentional that Viv spoke in a posher accent than the other gang members - I guess it was as it marks her out as different, just as Crabs' Australian accent seems to suggest that she won't be part of the main gang either.
I even liked the scenes with Elizabeth I surveying this anarchistic world with her lady in waiting and John Dee while the angel Ariel, an inhuman being of ambiguous form, guides them through the vision (Strange that Prospero's Books was brought up in this thread as wasn't Ariel one of the main characters in The Tempest?). Much of the dialogue in those scenes felt used like poetry than as narrative, for the way the lines of dialogue sounded and the images they conjure up more than for what was said itself (but that might just be because most of the dialogue in those scenes went over my head so I just enjoyed listening to the sounds and placements of the words rather than trying to fully understand their meaning!)
I felt the acting, although unpolished and uncertain in many places, seemed to fit well with the grimy, crude portrait of the world of the film itself, so I wouldn't criticise the film for the performances.
In a similar way to The Element of Crime, while I really liked the extra features on the Criterion disc, which went into great detail about the making of the film and its reception, I didn't think the extra features helped make the film itself any more understandable and accessible, which may have been a bit of a mistake. However, what is included is very good, even if I think they are overstating Toyah Wilcox's contribution to British culture as being a 'household name' - I mean The Good Sex Guide and Teletubbies series were well known but did they really make her a household name?