War Requiem (Derek Jarman; U.K., 1988)

Jarman’s nonnarrative lament to the tragedy of war opens with an elderly soldier, played by Laurence Olivier in his screen farewell, reciting poet Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “It seemed that out of battle I had escaped.” Throughout the film—the soldier’s remembrances?—we hear Benjamin Britten’s famed oratorio, “War Requiem,” which draws on Owen’s poetry, while witnessing Jarman’s poetic cinematic response. Tableaux detailing Owen’s life and death at twenty-five in the trenches are interwoven with archival footage of war’s devastation from World War I onward. Tilda Swinton plays a nurse; the dark-haired Nathaniel Parker, Wilfred Owens; and Owen Teale, the Unknown Soldier.

• Photographed by Richard Greatrex. “War Requiem” conducted by Britten, with Galina Vishnevskaya, Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as soloists. With Tilda Swinton, Nathaniel Parker, Owen Teale, Nigel Terry. (92 mins, Color/B&W, 35mm, From BFI, permission Kino Lorber)