Watch The Garden For Free

Very Cool!!!

Simply A Masterpiece

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Derek Jarman's jazzed-up home movie is very much a relic of its time. He mixes footage of his own extraordinary garden in Dungeness (one of the most remarkable & bleak landscapes in England)with dream-like re-enactments of New Testament stories given a gay spin. Church antipathy to homosexuality, the AIDS crisis, police and media brutality all spin around the screen in kaleidoscopic fashion, the images the film admits to be the dreamscapes of Jarman's own mind (he appears in his study and in his bed).The trouble with The Garden is that, although it is often visually remarkable, it is also shudderingly obvious. The scenes in which respectable old tutors bash their canes and bosh through Bibles as a boy prances on a table, or where 3 Santas homophobically abuse a gay couple, or where a camp pseudo-Pilate laughs with his minions in a sauna are all crushingly obvious pieces of public schoolboy sketch-show comedy, cut-price Monty Python skits which presume that the audience always already agrees with what is being said, so we needn't bother to argue, analyse or comprehend why. It's agit-prop at its dullest, and even Jarman's considerable abilities as a visual artist and editor can't raise this into being a work of art rather than a work of jejune satire.As for Jarman's vision of homosexuality, again he shows his class colours and sentimental bent. His gay boys are nice middle-class lads, neatly dressed and posing around like something out of Brideshead Revisited; they're very cute and noticeably silent. It's a very middle-England, excuse-making image of homosexuality, with no dissonance or awkwardness allowed, as if Jarman thought to be gay was to be a Jerome K Jerome-ish Two Men in a Boat.I suppose that the film is heartfelt and rises from a comfortable middle-class man's one piece of anger, the anger that he isn't accepted by the establishment he is a part of. It was probably necessary at the time, but it sure is a dated relic rather than the piece of masterpiece cinema his admirers might claim.

I wrote my analysis on this so I think its fitting to place it here, I don't think there are any spoilers but just in case there is one someone notices I gave the warning. It does hint at other parts in the film:The scene depicts the humiliation of two gay men, portrayed through the main sections of the New Testament. This segment I have chosen is rich in colours, symbolism and religious imagery and contains religious iconography. The deceased Derek Jarman was a well known director and screenwriter of unusual and challenging films, which were often longstanding stories that had been warped or had changed perspective.The second section is set in what looks like a sleazy massage parlour. In it are the clear divisions of authority and power, shown in terms of colour and grandeur and their performances, shown in confidence and gesture. The two men, as seen in the scene before, have been found. It is clear that they are unhappy about this, since their freedom is no longer possible and so they cower into each other in the middle of the room. They are in the middle of the room to show that they are the centre of attention, the objects towards which the rich and powerful men are projecting their intimidation. As it is, they do not seem to be rejecting their sexuality, but staying true to themselves, which is what Jesus did. The first shot is of a dripping wet, hairy adult leg which is raised and a finger bounces off a point of his foot, the point where a nail is driven through in a crucifixion, this may be a reference to the amount of torture that is to come, the fact of their impending death. In the massage parlour there are a number of highly unattractive older men walking around half naked and rubbing each other with oils and sponges, laughing and joking, acting as if they is nothing more pleasing than to humiliate and taunt the two men standing before them. The main man which I presume to be Pontius Pilate is wearing a grand red dressing gown and nothing underneath but for a pair of small gold pants. The reason for this presumption is that half way through, when he washes his hands in the water with the other men. He sings 'down to the river Jordan' as he does so. The river Jordan is the river which was known then as the river that fed the 'garden of God' and, in the New Testament, Jesus was baptised in it. This image and act of washing his hands is reminiscing of the section in the New Testament 'I wash my hands of you.' Gold and red: The colours of wealth and power. The other men are wearing an odd assortment of garments including a drawn on paper crown, a towel, a gold dressing gown, a gold fan and sunglasses. All of these garments and objects give the men higher status; they are comfortable, assured of their wealth and power. They prance around stupidly with great confidence in themselves, laughing along with their acquaintances in a casual façade and make-believe happiness. The lovers, standing there, enduring their laughter, their flaunting. Perhaps thinking wistfully of before when they were able to be alone together, something that riches and power and status would not have allowed. Taking a different perspective, this scene could portray a kind of hell. One where the devil is the man implementing the basin as a drum and going wild. His mental abuse of the men is challenging them, each deranged, primitive scream saying 'stand up for yourselves!' The parlour would be a taunting, strange sexual fantasy invading them, taunting them. As though the parlour is in their heads and it is just the devil and them, the great illusion, the temptation or allurement. The capricious nature of the devil defies all previous conviction of him being merely evil; it is depicting him as a primitive, impulsive being that transcends evil. His actions become almost bestial.Overall I find it and enchanted and fascinating picture from an artistic visionary - I loved it, but you should make up your own mind, this film is not for everyone.

One gets the impression that other reviewers on IMDb have never seen or appreciated Jarman's other films, or any art film for that matter. This isn't for the intellectually inert. One also wonders whether they've taken the time to watch this one more than once -- its conflicted and dense, drawing on mutually contradictory sources for its symbolism, and attempting a synthesis or nexus. The main themes are religion, love, oppression, family, and above all, time. Events and elements from every era of recorded human history co-exist together in one time and interact. While much of the film itself is done in the anxious, unsteady, rapid-moving style that Jarman came to be known for, other parts are filmed with graceful panoramic transitions. Throughout all the film, landscapes are replaced with artificial projections, perhaps to give the film an aura of unreality or allegory. It is at once both scripture and pornography, philosophy and nonsense, a gloomy warning and a hopeful swansong. I believe it to be one of Jarman's most un-acknowledged films. Don't let the harsh words of bad reviewers sway you against spending an evening absorbing this film -- its mesmerizing.

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.