the audience applauded

So much average

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Ya know that scene in Being John Malkovich, where he goes into his own mind and everyone inside says nothing but "Malkovich Malkovich, Malkovich?" I felt that way watching this movie. Through the whole movie, I heard pretty much nothing but "Gaveston? Gaveston, Gaveston? Gaveston!" It's not that the movie's difficult to understand because of the Elizabethean language. I'm a huge fan of Shakespeare's plays, having read a number of them and seen plenty of film adaptations of them, so I can follow Elizabethean dialogue. But this... well, it ain't Shakespeare. Christopher Marlowe's style doesn't have the poetry or fluidity of Shakespeare. He didn't have Shakespeare's genius. Which makes this movie tough on the ear: boring, in fact.I'm occasionally tempted to watch this movie again, just to see if maybe it DOES have something to redeem itself, perhaps something I missed... and maybe I will, someday. But for now, I'll stick with Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing.

I should start off by mentioning that Edward II is a very strange movie. All the sets look the same, most of the actors aren't young and glamorous, and everyone speaks Elizabethan English even though it takes place in 1991. There were times that I felt I just wasn't "getting" it. But after a while I realized I was getting it -- it's just that I wasn't offered very much to begin with. This movie is so completely visually dull with its dirt floors and bare concrete walls (did I mention this takes place in 1991?) that I felt my eyes getting heavy. Would I have missed much if I had closed them? Well, a couple of softcore man-on-man sex scenes (did I mention that the actors aren't young and glamorous?) but other than that, looking at the inside of my eyelids wouldn't have been much less interesting. Edward II's script is also quite lacking. I don't know if this is the case with the play (the only Marlowe play I've ever actually read is Dr. Faust) but in any case, I see no sense in making a movie from the script. I can't imagine someone reading the script and saying, "this looks good." The characters are all so coldly obsessed with whining about their own petty problems that there's no way someone could really care about them. Even their bratty children have their own agendas. Anytime someone was killed, I wasn't sure whether to be glad a character I hated was gone, or to be unhappy that another character I also hated had succeeded. My only praise for this movie is the acting. Given what these actors had to work with, I think they made a good attempt. Unfortunately, this was not enough to make this particular movie worth watching.

Definitely Derek Jarman's most refined film. That said, refined for Jarman is bizarre for most.Based VERY loosely on Christopher Marlowe's play from 1592, however, should be view in its own light / right. Whereas it does tend to capture the wonderful Marlow language, this is no "Shakespeare" here! It's a brilliantly acted ensemble piece, set in Jarman's abstract vision of the world, with a core message that is as valid today as it must have been shocking then.Jarman "paints" his film - as he always did - not in any logical manner or order, but like a mosaic of images, creating a whole and a statement - a strong statement about intolerance in this case.This one might even be palatable for non-Jarman fans.

The story of Edward II is a story of obsession, of a man whose one-track mind causes him to lose his kingdom, his lover and his life. Marlowe's play (probably his most dramatic and certainly his least poetic) gives lots of scope for developing the problems raised by Edward's infatuation for the unscrupulous and self-seeking Gaveston: his inattention to affairs of state, his irresponsible spending, his granting of important positions to Gaveston who has no interest in actually fulfilling his duties and Gaveston's general contempt for church, nobility and everyone else.Unfortunately director Jarman has arranged this production in such a way as to make us see Edward's story through Edward's eyes rather than those of an outside observer. The sets are mostly pueblo-style interiors, giving the impression that this is a middle-class household not the palace of a king. There are no extras, and the scenes are bare of people, again reinforcing the idea that this is a private rather than a public story. The nobles are treated as tourists who are out of place in the life of the king. Our attention is focussed constantly on the intimate relations between individuals: Edward and Gaveston, Edward and Isobel, Isobel and Mortimer.Edward, whose whole life was dominated by his obsessive love for Gaveston (just count how many times he says "my Gaveston" in the play) saw his world in just this way: everything anyone did was measured against how it affected his romance, and everything he did was to further it. When Isobel abandons him, she loses her humanity and becomes in his eyes a grotesque vampire. Indeed one wonders how much of what we see as reality in the film is Edward's fantasies and imaginings as he becomes increasingly deranged.An intriguing approach, perhaps, but the problem is that Edward's one-track mind makes for a one-track monochromatic presentation, and quite frankly it becomes so superficial as to be tedious after a bit. Without the depth provided by an objective viewpoint we lose interest.Scenes of unnamed naked men making love or playing rugby without a ball must have been put in for the titillation of gay viewers. They added nothing to the story. On the other hand the love between Edward and Gaveston was sincerely and persuasively played, and a good thing too, because that's about all you get here.Waddington's performance is splendid and gives a lot of life to what might otherwise have been a total yawn; it's worth the trouble of watching this just to see him. Tilda Swinton's performance is overrated; she delivers her best monologue as slowly and tonelessly as possible and it doesn't take long to start wondering when she's going to show some emotion.