Blue (1993)

Derek Jarman made Blue in 1993, the final year of his life, as his sight deteriorated severely due to AIDS-related cytomegalovirus retinitis. The film, if that is the right word for it, runs for 79 minutes and consists of a single, unbroken field of International Klein Blue, a colour Jarman had long associated with Yves Klein's work and with ideas of infinity, loss, and transcendence. Backed by funding from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Basilisk Communications, and BBC Radio 3, it arrived at a moment when British cultural institutions were, however cautiously, beginning to take the AIDS crisis seriously as a subject for serious art. That context matters enormously. This is not a formal experiment for its own sake. It is a document of a man reckoning with his own disappearance, set against a political and medical landscape that had, for much of the previous decade, treated people in his position as statistics or cautionary tales rather than human beings.

Jarman, who had already established himself as one of the most distinctive and uncompromising voices in British independent cinema through films like Sebastiane, Caravaggio, and Edward II, directed the piece himself while also contributing to its voiceover. He is joined on the soundtrack by Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton, and John Quentin, all familiar collaborators from his earlier work. Swinton in particular had become closely associated with Jarman's aesthetic over the previous decade, and her voice here carries the same quality of controlled grief that characterises the whole piece. The sound design, mixing spoken text with music and ambient effects, was produced in close collaboration with BBC Radio 3, and the film was broadcast on Channel 4 and BBC Radio 3 simultaneously on its UK release, a detail that tells you something about where it sits between art forms. As a piece of documentary work, it sits in unusual company: compare it to something like Amazing Grace or Island Soldier, and you see immediately how far Blue strays from any recognisable documentary grammar. Those films use images, faces, and locations to anchor their emotional weight. Jarman strips all of that away. It is also worth noting that, among early 1990s British releases, it occupies a very different corner of the decade's output from something polished but unremarkable like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which arrived just two years earlier.

Whether that stripping away constitutes an act of radical cinema or a departure from cinema altogether is precisely the question the film forces you to ask, and it is one this review takes head-on.

Blue (1993), directed by Derek Jarman, isn’t a film in any conventional sense, it’s a 79-minute blue screen accompanied by a voiceover: part memoir, part meditation, part poetic lament. There are no characters, no settings, no images beyond a single, unchanging hue of International Klein Blue filling the frame. What unfolds is essentially an audio piece (a radio play, a spoken-word elegy) about Jarman’s life, his fading vision due to AIDS-related illness, and his reflections on art, love, and mortality. The words are often beautiful, raw, and deeply moving; the emotions, undeniably powerful. But as a movie? It defies the very definition. Cinema, at its core, is a visual art form built on movement, composition, and imagery. Blue rejects all of that, not as an oversight, but as a deliberate artistic statement. You can admire its courage and mourn its context, but you can’t watch it like a film. The experience is more akin to listening to a haunting audiobook while staring at a colour. It’s meditative, yes, and emotionally resonant in stretches, but it also tests patience in ways that feel less like engagement and more like endurance. Without visual variation or cinematic language, the mind wanders, even when the words demand attention. Not because the content lacks merit, but because judged as a film, Blue offers none of the elements that make cinema unique. It’s a profound audio document trapped in a movie theatre. Respect it? Absolutely. But call it a great film? That depends entirely on how loosely you’re willing to define the word “film.” For most viewers seeking storytelling, image, or motion, it will feel less like cinema and more like an experiment that left the projector unplugged.

I find myself in much the same place. There is something genuinely affecting about sitting with Blue, and I would not want to dismiss what Jarman achieved here on a human level. But admiration for a person's courage and circumstances is a separate thing from judging the work as cinema, and conflating the two does neither Jarman nor the audience any favours. The honesty of separating those two responses feels right to me. It is the kind of film that earns a place in cultural history without necessarily earning a repeat viewing, which is, when you think about it, a rather melancholy distinction for any piece of art to hold.

Rating: ★  | Year: 1993  | Watched: 2026-05-11

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