The Garden (film)

The Garden is a 1990 British arthouse film directed by Derek Jarman and produced by James Mackay for Basilisk Communications, in association with Channel 4, British Screen, and ZDF. It focuses on homosexuality and Christianity set against a backdrop of Prospect Cottage, Jarman's bleak coastal home of Dungeness in Kent, and his garden and the nearby landscape surrounding a nuclear power station, a setting Jarman compares to the Garden of Eden or Garden of Gethsemenae. The film was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.

Summary
The film follows a seemingly innocent and loving gay couple whose idealistic existence is interrupted when they are arrested, severely humiliated, tortured and killed. In between this are nonlinear images of religious iconography — a Madonna (Tilda Swinton) who is overexposed and harassed by paparazzi in balaclavas; a Jesus who painfully watches the world pass him by; a Judas who is hanged and used as a tool to advertise credit cards; and water dropping from an image of Christ on the crucifix. Other images include the Twelve Apostles as 12 women in babushkas, sitting at a table by the seaside as they run their fingers around the edges of wine glasses to create an ominous hum.

It also focuses on what it means to be gay in the 20th century, highlighting Section 28, of which Jarman was from the start a noted opponent. The film is augmented with unusually tinted shots of beaches and bizarre changes between classical, Cypriot and other types of music and sound.