Jubilee (1979) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Bod, a self-described sex-hating anarchist, strangles Queen Elizabeth II during a street robbery specifically to make a political statement against established authority. The crown represents everything the nihilist group despises, the monarchy, institutional power, and societal hierarchy. The theft isn't motivated by greed but by symbolic rebellion, demonstrating the group's contempt for royal authority and their willingness to commit extreme acts as performance art.

Foreshadowing: Earlier, Amyl Nitrate teaches a history lesson that glorifies radical violence and scandalous figures, establishing the group's ideology.

• bod
• queen elizabeth ii
• crown
• murder
• anarchist
• rebellion

John Dee, an Elizabethan occultist, commands Ariel (the spirit from Shakespeare's The Tempest) to transport Queen Elizabeth I across time. Using supernatural means, Dee pulls the Tudor queen from the 16th century into the decayed Britain of the 1970s, where she becomes a silent observer to the anarchic society that has emerged centuries after her reign.

• john dee
• ariel
• queen elizabeth i
• time travel
• supernatural

After Kid achieves television fame, Viv and the three men visit Max at his bingo hall where police conduct a violent raid. The confrontation ends brutally, Sphinx, Angel, and Kid are all killed by police during the chaos. Their deaths mark a turning point, prompting the surviving women to seek revenge against the officers involved.

Foreshadowing: Earlier tensions between Kid and police during the Westminster Cathedral disco clash foreshadowed this violent confrontation.

• sphinx
• angel
• kid
• max
• bingo hall
• police
• violence

Following the deaths of Sphinx, Angel and Kid, the gang seeks brutal revenge against the two policemen involved. One officer had been having an affair with Crabs, making his betrayal personal. Bod and Amyl capture and castrate him in retribution, while Bod later kills the second officer with a petrol bomb at his doorstep. The violence represents the group's extreme response to authority figures who have violated their trust and caused their members' deaths.

Foreshadowing: The earlier killings of Happy Days and Lounge Lizard established the group's willingness to use sexual violence as a tool.

• bod
• amyl
• policeman
• castrate
• revenge
• crabs

Borgia Ginz is an impresario who represents the fusion of show business and political opportunism. He purchases derelict properties and converts them into music venues, eventually buying Westminster Cathedral and Buckingham Palace themselves, turning sacred and royal spaces into commercial performance stages. He signs the gang to a recording contract and ultimately whisks the surviving women to Dorset, framing it as 'the only safe place to live.' His character embodies the film's critique of how rebellion gets commodified and absorbed by the very system it opposes.

• borgia ginz
• impresario
• property
• music venues
• recording contract

At the film's conclusion, Dee, Ariel, and Elizabeth I abandon their exploration of modern chaos and return to the sixteenth century in a pastoral, dreamlike sequence. This surreal escape represents a retreat from the brutality and cultural decay they've witnessed into nostalgic historical fantasy. The ending suggests that the present is so fundamentally broken that even the turbulent Elizabethan era, through historical illusion, feels preferable to the nihilistic 1970s.

• elizabeth i
• return
• sixteenth century
• dreamlike
• escape
• nostalgia

The crown stolen by Bod represents far more than monetary value, it symbolizes royal authority, the historical continuity of the British monarchy, and the established social order. By stealing it during a brutal murder, Bod attempts to destroy the symbolic power of the crown. However, the crown's ultimate fate remains unclear, and the film seems more interested in the act's symbolic meaning than in the object itself.

• crown
• queen elizabeth ii
• symbolism
• authority
• rebellion

The film presents violence with documentary clarity, refusing to sensationalize or moralize. The constant stream of brutal acts, strangulation, assault, castration, bombing, reflects the nihilistic worldview of the characters and serves as the film's critique of cultural decay. The violence isn't meant to shock for shock's sake but to mirror the actual brutality the characters see in society around them.

• violence
• nihilism
• decay
• documentary style
• cultural critique

Mad, Bod and Crabs asphyxiate Happy Days (one of Crabs's lovers) with red plastic sheeting in a disturbingly casual manner. Later, the trio breaks into the flat of Lounge Lizard, an androgynous rock star, where Bod throttles him to death. These killings exemplify the group's arbitrary brutality, they kill not for strategic reasons but as expressions of their complete nihilism and contempt for others.

• happy days
• lounge lizard
• murder
• nihilism
• killing

Amyl Nitrate leads the squat-based scene and delivers provocative history lessons that glorify radical violence and scandalous historical figures. She represents the tension between art and cruelty, reminiscing about her past life in ballet while advocating for violent rebellion. She performs a provocative pastiche of 'Rule Britannia' for Ginz and later participates in the revenge killing and castration of the policeman.

• amyl nitrate
• leadership
• history lesson
• ballet
• violence

After the police revenge killings, Ginz evacuates the four surviving women, Amyl, Bod, Chaos, and Crabs, to Dorset, presenting it as 'the only safe place to live these days.' Dorset represents a reclusive, right-wing aristocratic enclave. The move marks a surreal pivot from urban decay to pastoral refuge, and Ginz signs them to a recording contract there, offering a false promise of legitimate future, though the film frames this as capitulation to a broken system rather than genuine escape.

• dorset
• ginz
• escape
• recording contract
• aristocratic

As a silent observer throughout the film, Elizabeth I witnesses the destroyed urban landscape, the nihilistic youth culture, and the casual brutality of the society. Her presence provides an anachronistic lens through which the viewer sees the 1970s, through the eyes of a monarch from an earlier age confronting a world that has turned violent and chaotic. The film suggests she finds it incomprehensible orhorrifying, ultimately choosing to flee back to her own time.

• queen elizabeth i
• observation
• modern britain
• decay
• nihilism