Edward II

Bracing, bold, and personal, Derek Jarman's 1991 film adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's play "Edward II" - a project that came about late in Jarman's career, made a mere two years before his death from AIDS-related complications in 1993 - is stylistically stark and brutal. The sets are high-walled and semi-outdoors (with earthen floors and, in at least one scene, a tree growing near the edge of the screen); the action is cloaked in darkness; the time period is, in many ways, contemporary; and the setting falls somewhere between an idealized England and a nightmare-infused, half-forgotten mangle of history lessons.

Most pointed is the way Jarman underscores the gay content of Marlowe's play, which strongly hints that the close friendship between Edward II and Piers Galveston was a passionate sexual relationship. It's not known whether this is historically accurate, but the king's bosom friend was the bane of the English nobility. In Marlowe's telling it was snobbery on the part of the nobles as much as Gaveston's abusive arrogance that was to blame; the gentry abhor his humble origins and his vulgar, mocking ways. (They're none too fond of the romance he has going on with His Majesty, either.)

Marlowe's theater piece also depicts Edward's Queen, Isabella, as being angered by her husband's rejection of her as a romantic partner. She takes up with Mortimer, the First Earl of March; the two plot the king's death, with Mortimer's plan being to usurp the throne. (This is generally true, historically speaking, though of course the literary version streamlines and simplifies events quite a lot.)

Jarman brings Marlowe's text to the screen in a trim hour and a half, but sets the playwright's dialogue against striking imagery, such that England's long oppressing of LGBTQ people (homosexuality was not decriminalized in England until 1950) occupies a thematic primacy. To wit: The battle scenes between Edward's army and Mortimer's are depicted as street battles between, respectively, a ragtag crowd of ACT-UP demonstrators and riot gear-equipped police. All of this hearkens straight back to Jarman's own account, in his 1991 memoir "At Your Own Risk," of an occasion on which he was bullied by police officers, whom he characterized as a band of thugs (or words to that effect).

Nor does Jarman shy away from the violent homo-sadism of Edward II's murder at the hands of putative heterosexuals. Marlowe's method of execution is a red-hot iron shoved up Edward's ass, which the playwright dramatically justifies as a method of execution that won't leave outwardly visible signs, but Jarman's visuals depict it as nothing less than a lethal and malicious rape.

Elsewhere, Jarman exhibits a brilliant sense of irony and nature; in one exchange, a crossbow-wielding Isabella is seen using a dead heart for target practice. The joke is both grim and excruciating; her collision with those who ceaselessly scheme to deprive Edward of Gaveston (and the king of his throne) makes her, in essence, a slayer of his - and here's the pun - heart. At another moment, Tilda Swinton's delivery of a key line screams out with subtext: "Is it not queer that he is thus bewitched?" Isabella muses, in speaking of Edward's infatuation with Gaveston. By the time Edward himself is addressed by an unrepentant rebel with the words, "Tyrant! I scorn thy threats and menaces," one understands that it doesn't matter who's saying what lines: Jarman is offering a comprehensive Fuck You to all of heteronormativity.

Jarman's voice, pique, courage, and artistry are missed in our current age, in which cinema is swamped with the digital airbrush of CGI, the megaplex runneth over with superhero fantasies, and vapid doubletalk disguised as retro-conformity chokes off what's left of political discourse. There could hardly be a better time than now for "Edward II" to be released. One yearns for the equally edgy "Caravaggio" (the film debut, not incidentally, of both Swinton and Sean Bean) and bristly, less forgiving works like "The Garden," "The Last of England," and "Jubilee" - ah, but this is a good start, indeed.