Focus on DEREK JARMAN: Edward II (1992)

I had a rush of homo-nostalgia the moment Edward II started. That scene with Andrew Tiernan's Piers Gaveston reading the letter from his king and lover, with the sailors sexing on the bed beside him... Many not-so-savoury, under-the-blanket memories. The images set fire to my then-virgin, flesh-curious synapses. The words echoed in my head like suddenly-remembered thoughts of my own (though they're clearly Christopher Marlowe's). It was like walking through a waking wet dream.

Too much information?

Sorry. Edward II was a film I was quite "intimately" connected to. The years haven't dulled the sensations. It still electrifies, though now in a very specific way - like an involuntary jerk. A jolt of developmental memory. To be honest, I was a little overcome at the reaction.

I've mentioned a few times in these comments on Jarman that his films, being so tied to their time, are difficult to fully appreciate. My reaction to Edward II only confirms my suspicions. This is a film I saw on release (or very hard upon) and my love for it and its mentality forming, queer-fashioning importance still resonates. It is a cultural timewarp, not only in its ability to draw me back to my adolescence but also in its anachronistic incarnation.

Jarman presents Marlowe's play as a paean of protest and doomed love. It doesn't take too much to queer Marlowe but through Jarman's pared back adaptation the play is freed up to comment on (then) contemporary issues in a way that feels as if the author knew what was to come. This isn't just redressing Elizabethan poetry in modern day garb, Jarman finds intrinsic connections between the play's warlike dogma and Thatcher's particular brand of conservatism, between the defence of Edward and Gaveston's love and Jarman's own virulent queer activism, and between queer love then and now - something both Marlowe and Jarman are quite up front about.

It is an exceptionally effective correlation. Even with the distance of Marlowe's words, Jarman's two leads, Tiernan and Steven Waddington can tear out a heart with a single scene (assisted in no small part by Cole Porter and Annie Lennox). Jarman casts Marlowe's lovers as an eternal couple, bolstering their significance with generations of queer defiance and cultural baggage. Two men dancing under a spotlight in the sparest of rooms. In their pyjamas. It is a tender farewell; a heartbreaking one. And in 1992, an image impossible not to connect to the sweeping forced farewells as a result of the AIDS crisis.

In Jarman's alternate space, not now, not then, he can telescope their tragedy by facing the queers off against the straights without the disproportionate "normalcy" of the real world. He can give their love the upper hand even amongst the historic tragedy. His connections are forceful but reverent to the text. The two reinforce one another in a way that, one can't help but feel, Marlowe would have approved.

I guess the success of this adaptation and my adolescent connection to it tinted my expectations of Jarman as a film maker. Edward II is undoubtedly one of his less impressionistic works and I came to it in a time when the issues were personally and socially pertinent. I was hoping Jarman would spark a similar reaction with all his films. Yet, their power, for me at least, has diminished with distance and social evolution. Without their foil, many have felt like shouting at the wind.

This one, though, taps into the timeless and will remain nestled in my soft spot.


Next up: Wittgenstein.

This post contributes to Director Focus: Derek Jarman.