MovieChat Forums > The Last of England (1988) Discussion > pretentious nonsense

pretentious nonsense

posted 18 years ago by rlange-3
31 replies | jump to latest

Almost unwatchable. If your idea of a good movie is watching some guy humping a piece of paper interspersed with children picking flowers followed by the repetitive jerky vignettes of some addict tying off this movie will thrill you to no end.

As an extra special feature we hear some chap droning on the background, lines that sound 'alienated'. Woo woo. Free verse in praise of sniffing glue (no kidding).

Its a little hard to believe that anyone with three or more functioning brain cells could sit through this pretentious malarky. But no doubt some will engage in an elaborate form of self deception in which they imagine themselves to be part of a select enlightened class which sees deep meaning. In that sense it is like a Rorschach of barfed up pizza -- someone is sure to call it art, while most will realize it was yesterday's meal with a Salmonella topping.

[–] kathaus-1 18 years ago

I believe the lines about 'alienated' and 'sniffing glue were quotes from Kerouac.

I just saw this last night and am still trying to figure it out. The flickering images and drones are a painful *beep* and hurt my eyes. Very 80's in its editing style. It is definitely almost unwatchable but that doesn't mean it has no merit. This is not "Die Hard" and is not meant to be entertainment. I'm wondering if he was attempting to induce hallucinations with repetitive flashes of light.

[–] igorusmaximusq 18 years ago

It is definitly not a movie you will "enjoy" because it is not ment to be like that. I watched it and.... Now i'm thinking about it a lot. And i can say now that in very special way it WAS enjoyable.

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[–] phileroach 18 years ago

It's not mainstream, that't why most people don't like it. Jarman is an artist, not a storyteller!

[–] saltsan 18 years ago

This is what educated people call an avant-garde film. (Reactionary types and uneducated people call it pretentious nonsense.) Avant-garde filmmaking goes back to the 1920s and has a long history, particularly among gay filmmakers like Jean Cocteau, Jack Smith, Barbara Hammer. They don't tell stories, nor to they aspire to. They exixt to create dream states (or, in this case maybe nightmare states) and to have a strong, phenominalogical impact. Like a symphony or a Jackson Pollak painting. If you don't like art, just say so.

[–] rlange-3 17 years ago

As predicted, someone looked at the barfed up pizza and called it art. rofl

You think you got educated. I think you got dumbed down past stupid. Oh well, are we having fun yet?

psst. If you are going to use big words to impress people, learn to spell them, i.e. "phenomenological". Heidegger would be embarassed by such pseudointellectual poppycock.

All in good fun. Hey if you enjoyed it fine, but don't started plying your pretense on me by calling me uneducated saltsan.

[–] saltsan 17 years ago

Typical. Run a quick and dirty posting through a spell check and cry "gotcha" when you find the inevitable error. If a professor flunked you and then split an infinitive while talking to you during office hours would you use that to deny the validity of the F? Great to be able to think that way. Makes life so simple. By the way, do you think Jackson Pollack's work is "barfed up pizza?" Did you know that both Francis Ford Coppola and Gus Van Sant have said they think THE LAST OF ENGLAND is a masterpiece? Enjoy your pre-Modern conception of art, buddy. Have fun reading only Charles Dickens melodramas and looking at paintings of fine ladies and kings on horses. =)

[–] rlange-3 17 years ago

heh, when you are attempting to impress people with your intellectual superiority it helps to know how to spell the big words you are trying to use. :-)

[–] saltsan 17 years ago

As William Burroughs once said: "Great spellers, despite common wisdom, tend to be among the least intelligent people.” Really.

By the way, you know that your line "barfed up pizza” is an exact quotation from a member of the NY art world greybeard set who thought Jackson Pollack was a charlatan, and not a real artist. Today’s “barfed up pizza” is tomorrow’s canonical masterpiece. ;-)

[–] rlange-3 17 years ago

I won't sue the artsy guy for plagiarism, even though I have been using the "barfed up pizza" example ever since an overly enthusiastic beer and pizza party in school, far back in the day :-)

[–] saltsan 17 years ago

The "artsy" person attacking Pollack did so in, I think, the early 50s. You can't be that old, can you? Maybe you are. That would help explain you not liking Last of England. Hard to imagine a 90 year old warming up to such a film. =)

[–] NottinghamshireRipper 17 years ago

And tomorrows canonical masterpiece is the day afters old crap.

[–] saltsan 17 years ago

Er.... No. Once a film/play/novel enters "the cannon", it tends to stay there: "Citizen Kane," "King Lear," "Gravity's Rainbow..."

[–] jadeyeti 17 years ago

Yep, pretentious crap of the highest order. It really is the film to measure against for the standard of worst film ever made. In 20 years since seeing this rubbish, I have yet to see a film more dire, let alone incompetant, up itself, or more pointless or plotless.

[–] Animal_Hospital 17 years ago

I don't know if I can stomach other Jarman's films, they seem plusher and a bit Greenawayish, but this one was cruel, elegiac study on decay, and I loved it. It was also very emotional which does cancel out accusations of pretentiousness - but perhaps not those of sentimentality.

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[–] megArnold 14 years ago

Just saying.

[–] megArnold 14 years ago

You've got a lot to catch up, then. Try any old MST3k episode, for starters "Monsters a-go-go" or "Manos - the hands of fate".

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[–] ibbi 13 years ago

The movie is a man's expression of the way he felt about a time and a place, it's unwatchable if you sit down to watch it expecting a story. It's a failure if you think it doesn't effectively make any kind of comment on anything.

___
http://tinyurl.com/6beuand

[–] megArnold 12 years ago

Whose failure is it then? It spoke strongly to me, perhaps because I was alive back in the time it comments on.

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Hmmm?

[–] JDHOPPER66 12 years ago

I_bet_you've_never_seen_an_avant-garde_film_that_you_didn't_consider
__to_be_"pretentious_rubbish"
_
Go_watch_some_Judy_Dench_melodrama___
Oh_excuse_me___some_DAME_Judy_Dench_melodrama_
_
Stupid_git_

[–] James M 11 years ago

Didn't Dame Judy voice Jarman's Angelic Conversation?

[–] m_a_singer 10 years ago

Didn't Dame Judy voice Jarman's Angelic Conversation?

Good catch!

For heaven's sake, people. I don't like a lot of what some people like, but I try not to act like those people have personally urinated in my breakfast cereal by having different taste. I think The Last of England is beautiful to look at and painfully angry to experience. I'm happy to keep appreciating it whatever some people think.

[–] Xcalat3 10 years ago

nonsense indeed, it was goddamn awful.

Liberate tutemet ex inferis.
pro ego sum diabolus, pro ego sum nex.

[–] darkness_surroundz 8 years ago

I would have not been able to tell that this was a statement of Jarmans rage against the devolutionary Thatcherism that swept the UK, without the blurb on that back cover.....I guess London and environs have many miles of abandoned concrete monster buildings (see the cover of DEAD CAN DANCE*Spleen and Ideal)
To advertise Tilda Swinson as the star is exaggerating-she is in for the last 10 minutes and maybe a minute rolling about in some daisies earlier in the film. I kept waiting for that iconic image of her screaming while tearing off her wedding dress-never happened. The new cover has a better design.

I can't for the life of me understand why one would buy this on Blu Ray