Edward II

My candidate for the best Derek Jarman movie to date is this politically potent and deliberately shocking and anachronistic adaptation of the Christopher Marlowe play that rethinks it in terms of contemporary English homophobia and just about everything else that might be summed up as the Thatcher-Reagan legacy. Shooting his spare settings in crisp 35-millimeter images, Jarman gives the tragedy a seriousness and potency that puts Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books to shame. Coscripted by Stephen McBride and Ken Butler; with Steve Waddington, Andrew Tiernan, Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, and Jerome Flynn, and music performed by the Elektra Quartet. (At one climactic juncture, Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics performs Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.”) (Broadway)

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