The Garden

The Garden is a 1990 British arthouse film by director Derek Jarman produced by James Mackay for Basilisk Communications in association with Channel 4, British Screen and ZDF. It focuses on homosexuality and Christianity set against a backdrop of 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.

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.

The film follows a seemingly innocent and in love gay 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 (played by Tilda Swinton) who is overexposed and harassed by paparazzi in balaclavas; a Jesus who painfully watches the world pass him by; a Judas who is hung and used as a tool to advertise credit cards; and water dropping from an image of Christ on the crucifix. It also focuses on what it means to be gay 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 haunting classical, Cypriot and other types of music and sound. The film has a soundtrack by Simon Fisher-Turner and production design by Derek Brown.

The Garden stars Tilda Swinton, Johnny Mills, Philip MacDonald, Roger Cook, Spencer Leigh, Kevin Collins,Jodie Graber and Jarman himself.

It is currently the only one of Jarman's feature-length films not available on Region 1 DVD.

External links

• Time Out review of The Garden
• New York Times review of The Garden
• The Garden at the Internet Movie Database

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