Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

What an exhilarating, entrancing, searing piece of work. Oh, it did cost me a bit to go along with the dialogue so easily, but the whole thing was just fantastic. The ensemble cast seems to be having the time of their lives speaking all of these juicy dramatic lines. Tilda Swinton, especially, manages to go beyond my expectations to deliver an all-time worthy performance. This is what she's best at, this sort of icy, hypnotizing, ethereal role, and she more than delivers. In a film full of wonderful performances, she stands at the very top. The whole thing is just completely and utterly mesmerizing, impossible to look away.

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.

Tilda Swinton is great, and the Act Up/Gay is good message is great, but what's not so good is the portrayal of Piers and the King. They're obnoxious, rude, and hurtful. It's sad because it seems there are perfectly valid reasons to hate and overthrow them that have nothing to do with heterosexism. Oh, and Annie Lennox is great too, but interrupting the movie for a fawning music video was a strange move.

I found this movie nice, but somehow strange. I would have found it better if they had either really modernized the script and the settings, as they did it with "Romeo and Julia" starring Leonardo DiCaprio, or they had set it completely in a medieval world, with big sets etc (possibly they hadn't the budget for that), but I didn't like the simple way the sets and the film was made. Still, Edward II is a play that should get the respect it deserves (=more adaptions into movies)