War Requiem 1989

The late great Derek Jarman's film of Benjamin Britten's unique choral work. Faced with the task of creating a visual equivalent to Britten's work, and using only the words Britten used (the poems of Wilfred Owen and the Latin Mass for the Dead), Jarman cast Tilda Swinton as the nurse looking after the young, doomed Wilfred Owen and persuaded Laurence Olivier, in his final screen role, to play the Unknown Soldier. The result is one of the most passionate pleas for peace come out of the dark days of the late 1980s......