"The Garden" is a series of beautiful images depicting The Passion of Christ--substituting the life of Jesus with the modern plight of gay men for understanding. A gay couple (Johnny Mills and Kevin Collins) represents Jesus and through a series of surreal and absurd visuals, the condemnation of Christ is represented. There is no story told out loud, it's within the subconscious of the movie itself and that of the viewer. The Virgin Mary (Tilda Swinton) becomes a modern day celebrity harassed by media paparazzis and Mary Magdaline (Spencer Leigh) becomes a vilified drag queen. We are treated to the campy, weird and shocking imagery of two lovers tortured by a cop dressed as Santa Claus, a drag queen stoned by debutantes in slow motion, and Jesus (Roger Cook) walking by a nuclear power station. Sounds like Monty Python.
The god-like narration is a poem about the journey the film takes and the pain of loss associated with AIDS. As the narration states, this film "wants to share this loneliness with you" and it's non-narrative, experimental and home movie like quality takes you on a wonderful "journey without direction". The film takes the persecution of Christ and puts it in modern times, or an unknown time for that matter. There are two homosexual martyrs who are persecuted like Christ, by the church, and many strange visual delights, but not much dialogue except for poetic narration. Like Jodorowsky's "The Holy Mountain", it's full of bizarre religious images. The set pieces and costumes are very avant-garde and colorful. If you like weird art-house films with hallucinatory imagery, you'll probably enjoy "The Garden".
Filmed in the stark environment of director Derek Jarman's coastal home in the shadow of Dungeness power station, "The Garden" is a jazzed-up home movie very much a relic of its time, a powerful and moving series of allegorical dreamscapes. The narrative unfolds to find Jarman asleep at his desk, surrounded by Christian imagery. His dreams transpose New Testament events into a contemporary context, examining repressive attitudes towards homosexuality, the AIDS crisis and exploring Jarman's own feelings towards the Church. It's a collage movie, combining images, shot on super 8 film with a soundtrack by long time collaborator Simon Fisher Turner consisting of music, noises, soundcapes, and spoken words. Never has a "home movie" been so professionally done that is is suitable for a large movie theater. Yet it is a very personal cinematic confession. Like many of Jarman's films, it is quite esoteric--but you don't have to be gay to be moved by it's sheer passion and spiritual presence. People seem to love his work or despise it. He is definitely pretentious, and The Daily Mail commented that it is Jarman's "most silly film".
