Jarman's painterly eye and technical ingenuity are utilized to good effect here in this characteristically elliptical film that uses 12 Shakespeare sonnets (narrated by Judi Dench) as its starting point. With stop-motion effects, strange tableaux of eerie landscapes and a similar slew of Jarmanesque imagery, the black-and-white pictures processed on video lend the film a translucent and romantic air that is perfectly complemented by Dench's rich velvety intonations.

Excerpt from Channel 4 located HERE

***

Jarman's setting for twelve Shakespeare sonnets has no narrative as such, and the only dialogue is Judi Dench's reading of the poems. Yet even though it dispenses with such conventions, it remains a hypnotically beautiful film. Its textured, stop-frame tableaux of caves, rocks, water, and figures in strange and terrible landscapes throw up myriad painterly similarities: the lesser religious nightmares of a Bosch or Brueghel, Victorian landscape of the 'Gordale Scar school'. Very romantic.

 Excerpt from TimeOut Film Guide located HERE

***

Intense, dreamlike, and poetic, The Angelic Conversation is one of the most artistic of Derek Jarman's films. With his painter's eye, Jarman conjured, in a beautiful palette of light, colour and texture, an evocative and radical visualisation of Shakespeare's love poems.

Of the 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare, most were written to an unnamed young man, commonly referred to as the Fair Youth. Here, Judi Dench's emotive readings of 14 sonnets are coupled with ethereal sequences; figures on seashores, by streams and in colourful gardens. The disruption of these magical scenes with images of barren and threatening landscapes echoes perfectly the celebration and torment of love explored in the sonnets.

Shot on Super-8 before being transferred to 35mm film, the unique technical approach results in a striking aesthetic, with Coil's languorous soundtrack completing the intoxicating effect.