Hacker Cinema
Blue
1993 · Film · 79 min
Directed by Derek Jarman
Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.
4 positive1 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
This post brings back memories. I remember watching this trilogy in an old movie theater that still showed film, and it was amazing experiance.
"Red," "White," and "Blue" is a trilogy of French films made by Polish-born filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski. Each movie follows the color pallet.
Modern digital movies are way too sharp, in a bad way.
Art films don't have this problem, and that's where I've had my media exposure to death.
If you want to know about how hard life can get after the death of someone, I cannot recommend Blue by Kieslowsky enough.
Blue by Kieslowski. A movie about loss and freeing youself from the past. I saw it when I was 15, and I still remember how I felt when I got out of the theater. It has shaped the way I handle difficult times in life such as the loss of loved ones. Losing someone close to you breaks your soul, and to keep on living, you have to reinvent yourself every time.
Loss is an integral part of life. Acquiring material goods fools us into thinking that as life goes on, we have more things. But if you make it into old age, you will lose everything. Things go broke, your friends and family die, your health and mind fade, and finally you will lose your life. Being aware of this will help you lead a happier life. It seems contradictory. But somehow it isn't.
It's probably worth mentioning that Blue is more than a curiosity. It really is a profoundly moving film - one of Jarman's finest. If the synopsis of it on IMDB appeals at all I'd encourage you to track it down.
> But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think.
I've seen the first ten minutes of Blue, it's actually really good. After ten minutes you start seeing stuff, but you can't work out if it is your own imagination or the film itself. The concept of Blue could be advanced: I was thinking of "Gamma" - viewers are exposed to intense gamma radiation for 90 minutes.
I like drysart's criterion above (the delta-Q factor) as a way of discriminating between lowbrow but honestly-crafted crap like the usual MST3K fodder, and expensive yet incompetent crap like SW Episode 1.
But you raise an interesting point, in that there should also be a penalty for novel, provocative work that, while perhaps well-executed, rests on principles that can never be used again, so they don't advance the state of the art or otherwise leave us with any enduring influence. Works like Blue and John Cage's 4'33 would fall into that category, I think.
> I could go further and make a movie that was 90 minutes of a black screen. That would be a worse movie but an even less satisfying answer.
What about a blue screen?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106438/