Director: Derek Jarman, 12, 1989

Stars: Tilda Swinton, Laurence Olivier

Retail DVD

If you think Jarman’s work is overelaborate, oversentimental, and, frankly, overcamp, then this may not change your mind. Yet his poetic adaptation of Britten’s 1962 oratorio contains some of the most striking tableaux you will see on screen. His is an abstract but minutely observed response to Britten’s sometimes searing, sometimes contemplative work, and its message – the betrayal of youth by an impervious elite, the horror of warfare – is devastatingly realised, particularly by Swinton.

That this is Olivier’s final screen appearance (he recites a Wilfred Owen ode as a curtain-raiser) is a bonus; so is the recorded soundtrack, conducted by Britten himself.

DVD extras

Producer’s commentary, interviews

Buy the DVD here

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