Directed by Derek Jarman TAKE the captivating oetry of Christopher Mar ›we, unusually shart direction by Derek Jarman, and a story of high political intrigue, homosexual and straight love and jealousy. murder and revenge, mixed concisely in under ninety minutes and the result is an excellent film.
Edward II succeeded his warrior-king father in 1307. In A novas econo ao mur dered with a hot poker up his Berkeley castle. His wife Isabelle and her lover Moruntil overthrown by the dead powerful English pecrage by ignoring them, and elevating in their place a foreign, lowborn 'upstart", l'iers Gaveston. After Gaveston's abduction and murder by the caris, another low-born favourite, Hugh Despenser, took over his role.
It was not unustal for English kings to have (often Mortimer (played by Nigel Terry)
is a socialist quite happy to forcien) favourites and to nun into trouble with the mighty feudal aristocracy for interferthe government of the kingdom. What added the spo cial spice to this contrict was the undoubted homosexual relationship between Edward and Gaveston.
300 years later, the extra element added by Marlowe was to make this relationship explicit and central to the playFor never doted love or Ganymede, So much as he plains the queen. Caveston eres farewell pase However, in his first stooping to the lordly peens and it is clearly this challenge to the established order, and not the homosexuality (a Edward's nor Marlowe's day) which leads to the next upheival - the tressonable conspiracy against the monarch by the caris, led by Morimer and the spurnea queen.
Four centuries after the freethinking 'avant garde Marlowe shocked his audience with a story line which threatened the Elizabethan order, Jarman compresses the action still further without distorting the drama. The Deep despair: Isabella for this reviewer than they did, for example, in his Aortimer appears as a rmy colonel, the peers a backwoois suares, the church as not just the bastion but the prime mover in Edward's final defeat, in which the carls' army -nenacing phalanx of police ir riot gear onfront a lesbiar and gay nights protest, works powerfully.
The acting is uniformiy Edward and Gaveston leading the king to abandon the concerns of Queen Isabelle leading her to adultery and murderous in"Both pray and fim enc Pd film end wit managed, through the superfiwith no heroes - a weak and obserned monarch overthrown by a grasping and selfinh nobility - to present a highly ambiguous work which contained real challenges to es tablished order. Jarman's film can chim to nave successrully brought these up to date. Unusually sharo direction: Derek Jarman Edward with the 'upstart Gaveston It was good to read such an inforJim has been in Paris ahoad of the