The Garden

Derek Jarmon films are always interesting. People seem to love his work or despise it. "The Garden" takes the persecution that Christ faced and puts it in modern times, or an unknown time for that matter. We have two homosexual martyrs who are persecuted like Christ, by the church. Tilda Swinton plays a modern day Mary who's chased around by ruthless Paparazzis. The film contains many strange visual delights. There is not a whole lot of dialog except for poetic narration. Like Jodorowsky's "the Holy Mountain", it's chock full of bizarre religious images. The set pieces and Costumes are extremely avant-garde and colorful. If you enjoy films that are a trip for the mind, you'll enjoy "the Garden". I felt that Derek Jarmon was inventive with his camera tricks and imagery. If you like bizarre art-house films with hallucinatory imagery, you must see this film.

Some people live, and many others are just jealous vultures.

The pictures and metaphors are made with a edge of a blade. Two kind of life are represented, and the cyclic way of life is very well pictured. I've seen a film on the modern times that have the same intensity is the film by Serge Reggio and Philip Glass (there is no words, pictures speak their selves), it's Koyaanisqatsi. The recurrent anachronisms are well interesting too, because all this theater is eternal. This paradox asks some real questions about the times we are living, and all illusion that suits. The way we lead our life, is the time we give themselves to be free.

I can't really disagree with reviewers who dislike this film. It really isn't for everyone. It's kind of chaotic, and some things really don't work very well, and yet... there's something extraordinary about it: the combination of religious motifs and iconography, the elemental meditative character, the bleak Dungeness landscapes, the sense that the director is really engaging on some deep level with important things. The plot is vaguely connected to the Gospel narrative, and so everything has a symbolic connection to that, and has to be interpreted in relation to that. It all adds up to something extraordinary - yes weird and not altogether coherent, but still fabulous and haunting. A cinematic poem.

This is one of Derek Jarman´s best films. I have followed Derek Jarman´s career as a film maker and the only thing I want to say is that "THE GARDEN" is one of my favourite films.

Watching this movie gave me the feeling that I had suddenly gone insane for 90 minutes. Now I can say that some parts were merely awful while others were pretentious crap. The only things going for this movie are the presences of Tilda Swinton even though she doesn't speak, and the two leading men who were at least cute. But those points are not nearly enough to rescue "The Garden" from itself. Be warned.