Cold, cold, cold
I walk in this Garden
Holding the hands of dead friends,
Old age came quickly for my frosted generation.
Cold, cold, cold
They died so silently.
Did the forgotten generations scream?
Or go full of resignation
Quietly protesting innocence?
Cold, cold, cold
They died so silently.
I have no words.
My shaking hand cannot express my fury.
Sadness is all I have, no words.
Cold, cold, cold
You died so silently.
Linked hands at 4.00 am
Deep under the city, you slept on.
Never heard the sweet flesh song.
Cold, cold, cold
Matthew fucked Mark, fucked Luke, fucked John
Who lay on the bed that I lie on.
Touch fingers again as we sing this song.
Cold, cold, cold
We die so silently.
My gilly flowers, roses, violets blue,
Sweet garden of vanished pleasures.
Please come back next year.
Cold, cold, cold
I die so silently.
Good night boys, good night Johnny,
Good night. Good night.
(Derek Jarman)
The place
Derek Jarman bought a house in Dungeness three years ago. It sparked an idea and he began filming straight away. “As soon as I saw this dreary fishing community, I thought it would be a great place for the life of Christ. I felt that the fishermen and the boats could represent the Sea of Galilee, and that’s how it started. The garden was both the Garden of Eden and Gethsemane. We had already shot parts of THE LAST OF ENGLAND down here and gotten to know the place. It’s very unusual and quite unlike anything else in England. This is only the case for a mile or two. As soon as you turn the corner onto the Dungeness road, you are in another world. In some way it reminded me of North America with its telegraph poles and crazy corners. It is also a working-class area, so it is not pretty, but it has the best skies you can imagine. Because everything is so flat and there are no trees, it looks like a desert. You can watch the sun come up from the front of the house and watch it set behind the house in the evening. The light is wonderful. Then there is the nuclear power station, which in a way prevented the area from being overrun by people coming to build holiday homes. (Derek Jarman)
As if the world had forgotten Jesus’ message
Like all of Derek Jarman’s films, THE GARDEN is an innovative and controversial piece of work, a continuation of a highly original and personal approach to cinema which explores the rich possibilities of the medium in the process. The result is a stunningly vibrant and rich palette of image and sound, at times almost ethereal, at others terrifying in its directness. Jarman leads the viewer on a magical journey through the film – the structure of which he describes as a tapestry of moods, ranging from horror to humour, from melancholy to exhilaration, and one never knows what lies around the corner. The effect is provocative, sensual and highly stimulating.
The early part of the film is dominated by nature images of pristine beauty – flowers, shingle, the sea and the sky, integrated into scenes that show the filmmaker at work in the garden of his home in Dungeness, on the Kent coast, with the nuclear power station a constant presence in the background. A narrative slowly emerges in the form of dreamed scenes. We see Jarman asleep at his desk, surrounded by Christian imagery: a portrait of the resurrected Christ, a crucifix onto which water runs endlessly. He begins to dream and we find ourselves in another Garden of Eden, at the moment of the original sin. Besides the filmmaker, the film also features a dishevelled beachcomber played by Tilda Swinton and a young boy who can be interpreted both as the young Jarman and the Christ child, both of whom eventually dream parts of the narrative.
This narrative is a fragmented interpretation of the Passion story, though, significantly, in certain scenes the figure of Christ is replaced by two young men who are arrested, harassed, humiliated, tortured and finally murdered by brutal policemen dressed as Father Christmas. Christ looks on rather passive and sad. He seems almost confused, as if the world had forgotten his message. Jarman’s purpose here is to examine the role of the Church in the persecution of homosexuality through the centuries, to expose the moral justification for a climate of hatred which persists today, enshrined in legislation such as the pernicious Clause 28 (ed. note: see below). His intention, however, is not to attack Christ, who is treated with great reverence and respect in the film. The religious imagery also serves to open up the film, providing shared cultural meanings to which we can all relate. THE GARDEN is Jarman’s most personal work to date, touching on the Aids crisis and, in the process, on the issue of his own mortality. (Duncan Petrie, 1991)
Clause 28: An amendment to English, Welsh and Scottish law enacted in 1988 and repealed in 2003, which banned municipalities, schools and local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”: “1 – Ed.) A local authority shall not a) intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality; b) promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. 2) Nothing in subsection 1) above shall be taken to prohibit the doing of anything for the purpose of treating or preventing the spread of disease.”
