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The Garden (1990 film)
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Wikipedia article
'The Garden' is a 1990 British arthouse film directed by Derek Jarman and produced by James Mackay for Basilisk Communications, in association with Channel 4, British Screen, and ZDF. It focuses on non-binary gender identities sometimes expressed within the, even then, barely acceptable conventions of its time including homosexuality and the internal conflicts felt by some LGBT+ people with a world view influenced predominantly by Christianity set against a backdrop of Prospect Cottage, Jarman's bleak coastal home of Dungeness in Kent, and his garden and the nearby landscape surrounding a nuclear power station, a setting Jarman compares to the Garden of Eden or Garden of Gethsemenae.William Pencak The film was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.
Overview
Lacking almost any dialogue, the film is shown as Jarman's own subjective musings, which are tempered by the reality of his own mortality—when HIV-positive Jarman made the film he was facing death from AIDS. Jarman reads a moving elegy to lost friends at the film's end.
The film follows a seemingly innocent and loving gender fluid couple whose idealistic existence is interrupted when they are arrested, severely humiliated, tortured and killed. In between this are nonlinear images of religious iconography — a Madonna (Tilda Swinton) who is overexposed and harassed by paparazzi in balaclavas; a transwoman who, to the background soundtrack of a fox hunt is similarly humiliated and shamed by paparazzi and privileged cis-women; Jesus who painfully watches the world pass him by; a Judas who is hanged and used as a tool to advertise credit cards; and water dropping from an image of Christ on the crucifix. The film is explicity not a purely "gay" film but one in which the director's struggles with gender fluidity and the need to adopt a compromise identity as a gay man are repeatedly made clear including scenes expressing distress at the abandonment of a feminine identity and the shallowness of a gay culture centered purely on sexual intercourse.
Other images include the Twelve Apostles as 12 women in babushkas, sitting at a table by the seaside as they run their fingers around the edges of wine glasses to create an ominous hum.
It also focuses on what it meant to be required to be viewed as queer in the 20th century, highlighting Section 28, of which Jarman was from the start a noted opponent. The film is augmented with unusually tinted shots of beaches and bizarre changes between classical, Cypriot and other types of music and sound.
Production
The film has a soundtrack by Simon Fisher-Turner and production design by Derek Brown.
Home media
The Garden is available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Cast
* Tilda Swinton as Madonna
* Johnny Mills as Lover
* Philip MacDonald as Joseph
* Pete Lee-Wilson as Devil
* Spencer Leigh as Mary Magdalene / Adam
* Jody Graber as Young Boy
* Roger Cook as Christ
* Kevin Collins as Lover
* Jack Birkett as Pontius (as Orlando)
Other cast members;
Dawn Archibald, Milo Bell, Vernon Dobtcheff, Michael Gough, Mirabelle La Manchega and Jessica Martin.
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, 'The Garden' has a 100% approval rating, based on six reviews, with an average rating of 8.75/10.
Janet Maslin of 'The New York Times' in 1991, thought that the film was an "assemblage of turbulent images" and "is a peculiar blend of reflectiveness and fury". It "has a burning, kaleidoscopic energy" and "genuineness and pathos of Mr. Jarman's own situation".
References
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