Lombardo and I are different people.

Derek Jarman’s passion for film is exhibited by the 1993 film, Blue. The film features a single steady shot in the color blue that ties a deep poetic and lyrical memoir based on the director Jarman’s struggle with AIDS. Due to Jarman’s illness, it caused a partial blindness where he could only color blue. Its sole shot of one color is about 75 minutes with voiceovers of the director and other actors.

When I initially saw the screen, I was intrigued. “Wait… I know that blue. That’s Klein blues. Yves Klein!” I thought to myself, familiar with the painter. But in all honesty, the excitement vanished after a minute into the film. I realized there would be no other visuals given. 

Perhaps you can blame my generation’s shameful and short attention span to social media platforms where we watch either six second, fifteen second, or at most one minute videos before the next stream of videos are shown. This is why I needed to break the film into three parts of 25 minutes each and fully throughout a few days. I attempted to take notes on my phone of what is being said so I could pay closer attention. 

Aside from my attention span, I struggled with the narration. The diction and cadence seemed to go over my head when there are no visual examples. I found it tough to understand, especially since I am a textual and visual learner. 

When Lombardo wrote, “I am looking at Derek Jarman’s Blue – or I looked at it, and that blue is now inside me, because time past, time present, and time future are but one in transcendence.” I unfortunately wanted nothing but to stop looking at the color of the screen and leave this depressing scene Jarman painted. 

Granted, Jarman’s story is heavy, haunting, and full of nostalgia. I learned Jarman was an activist for LGBTQ+ rights “Understand that sexuality is as wide as the sea. Understand that your morality is not law. Understand that we are you. Understand that if we decide to have sex whether safe, safer, or unsafe, it is our decision and you have no rights in our lovemaking.” I also learned he was deeply scared through his anecdotes of battling AIDS. At some parts Jarman is seen as a dreamer hoping for something better than what it’s like for LGBTQ+ person battling aids. 

However, I feel as though I am not a fit for this movie. (Is it even a movie when there is no set of moving pictures?) I am sure Derek Jarman knew such an unconventional film would never be everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, I think this movie depicts not only the struggle of an LGBTQ+ member with AIDS, but the passion for film one director can have regardless of the situation. Lombardo said it best in the end of his essay, 

“But the immersion into the colour is total, into that colour par excellence that is blue – so mysterious, so inevitably charged with thousands of pictorial and poetic references, like Paris’s sky in Baudelaire‘s ’Le cygne‘…. The daring plunge into the void that the film forces the spectator to take, together with the director and the voices, frees from the constraints of concrete forms. Blue launches the extreme hypothesis that we see mystically and not materially, internally and not externally.” There is something to be said for an ill oppressed man to make such a risky film. And if it “frees from the constraints of concrete forms” for Lombardo, it could for you or anyone else.