I first saw "Sebastian" in my early twenties, eager to witness a film of the gay canon, but I was mostly disappointed: specially the ending, with its fish-eye distortion, was way too 70's for me, at the time a derogatory term in matters of cinematic taste.
I watched the film again today, some ten years later, and was hesitant whether it would be a philological, or an actual experience; it turned out the latter, even if of a mixed variety.
Right from the first shot Jarman informs us about - and with - his punk sensibility, mixing it with a sure, queer hand; but we should be quite attentive that this word - queer - is a complex matter for Jarman.
The film revolves around two unnerving short-circuits if you pay attention for it to become an apologetic - in the two senses of the word - piece of queer hagiography.
The first is the man with the leopard skin, to call him that. In his most striking appearance, he comes while Sebastian is delirious, arguably after a sun-stroke, about God's love, exemplified by the sun's caresses. I don't know if the text he recites is some sort of quotes, I am not informed on Sebastian's sayings and doings, but his sensuous, Christian speech strikes an uncanny note with the fact that the man in the leopard skin is a common depiction of Dionysus; is this a Nietszchean short-circuit between Apollo (who Sebastian names as the sun) and Dionysus, or a farewell to his pre-Christian past? We do not get an answer and this is poetically just.
The second is the more lighthearted and sly one. The gladiator-without-a-nose, seething with repressed homosexual feelings, apart from serving as a catalyst for Severus' own feelings, gets an unexpected treatment: in the scene where he babbles about Fellini's Satyricon and DeMille's decadence (and this is the actually pure and queer sensibility of the film) we sense Jarman makes a short circuit between garrulous film-goers interested in a gossipy manner in films and repressed gays. This is accurate and hilarious.
These two instances evacuate the film from any easy sense of queerness, or what actual side, if that matters, its maker is on. Is it on the side of lust? No, as Sebastian himself says and exemplifies: "Do you think your drunk lust will equal the love of God?" This is eloquent enough. But then, is it some sort of apologia for Christianity among deviant, bored, querulous soldiers? The Billy Budd turn does not elucidate matters either. For all it being obviously borrowed from Melville's story, it makes sense when we add it up to Max's, the gladiator-without-a-nose, seething repression (perhaps because he is the spineless spine of the film). Even the notorious slow-mo of the two lovers playing/fighting in the water is not that sensuous, but has an odd, generic quality about it; as if they were lovers out of being bored soldiers. I argue so because that scene was also patterned on a previous model, namely the groundbreaking "A very natural thing" appearing two years before Jarman's film, with the same aquatic play between lovers; only there it had a sense of paradise regained, not that suspending ambiguity (note also that these two lovers are dumbly obedient in performing Sebastian's tortures).
It is Sebastian himself, that I take as Jarman's misstep, and by that I do not mean in casting that specific actor as much as directing him into, to put it that way, passivity. He is too passive in order to validate his ordeal; we do not connect actively with him. Recalling Pasolini's naturals but not as engaging, he also has the wrong physique to convince us he is a lover of the sun.
On the other hand, even if it smells a bit too metaphysical, jumping a bit on our backs, the final, distorted shot is a master-stroke, in the best tradition of Mannerist painting, and succinctly says what it has to: now that Sebastian has died, we can look at everything, at a 360 degrees angle, and see nothing; now that his spirit is gone, Jarman conflates it with the gaze as object, to borrow a phrase from current film studies. Looking at everything at once is inscribed with a distortion, a grimace of the real. This distortion coincides with us looking from his position, and it is the conflation of the gaze and the holy body that gives the film its richness.
Eno's soundtrack with its spare, evocative tintinnabulation is apt punctuation for the film's genuine, gesturing spirituality.
I watched the film again today, some ten years later, and was hesitant whether it would be a philological, or an actual experience; it turned out the latter, even if of a mixed variety.
Right from the first shot Jarman informs us about - and with - his punk sensibility, mixing it with a sure, queer hand; but we should be quite attentive that this word - queer - is a complex matter for Jarman.
The film revolves around two unnerving short-circuits if you pay attention for it to become an apologetic - in the two senses of the word - piece of queer hagiography.
The first is the man with the leopard skin, to call him that. In his most striking appearance, he comes while Sebastian is delirious, arguably after a sun-stroke, about God's love, exemplified by the sun's caresses. I don't know if the text he recites is some sort of quotes, I am not informed on Sebastian's sayings and doings, but his sensuous, Christian speech strikes an uncanny note with the fact that the man in the leopard skin is a common depiction of Dionysus; is this a Nietszchean short-circuit between Apollo (who Sebastian names as the sun) and Dionysus, or a farewell to his pre-Christian past? We do not get an answer and this is poetically just.
The second is the more lighthearted and sly one. The gladiator-without-a-nose, seething with repressed homosexual feelings, apart from serving as a catalyst for Severus' own feelings, gets an unexpected treatment: in the scene where he babbles about Fellini's Satyricon and DeMille's decadence (and this is the actually pure and queer sensibility of the film) we sense Jarman makes a short circuit between garrulous film-goers interested in a gossipy manner in films and repressed gays. This is accurate and hilarious.
These two instances evacuate the film from any easy sense of queerness, or what actual side, if that matters, its maker is on. Is it on the side of lust? No, as Sebastian himself says and exemplifies: "Do you think your drunk lust will equal the love of God?" This is eloquent enough. But then, is it some sort of apologia for Christianity among deviant, bored, querulous soldiers? The Billy Budd turn does not elucidate matters either. For all it being obviously borrowed from Melville's story, it makes sense when we add it up to Max's, the gladiator-without-a-nose, seething repression (perhaps because he is the spineless spine of the film). Even the notorious slow-mo of the two lovers playing/fighting in the water is not that sensuous, but has an odd, generic quality about it; as if they were lovers out of being bored soldiers. I argue so because that scene was also patterned on a previous model, namely the groundbreaking "A very natural thing" appearing two years before Jarman's film, with the same aquatic play between lovers; only there it had a sense of paradise regained, not that suspending ambiguity (note also that these two lovers are dumbly obedient in performing Sebastian's tortures).
It is Sebastian himself, that I take as Jarman's misstep, and by that I do not mean in casting that specific actor as much as directing him into, to put it that way, passivity. He is too passive in order to validate his ordeal; we do not connect actively with him. Recalling Pasolini's naturals but not as engaging, he also has the wrong physique to convince us he is a lover of the sun.
On the other hand, even if it smells a bit too metaphysical, jumping a bit on our backs, the final, distorted shot is a master-stroke, in the best tradition of Mannerist painting, and succinctly says what it has to: now that Sebastian has died, we can look at everything, at a 360 degrees angle, and see nothing; now that his spirit is gone, Jarman conflates it with the gaze as object, to borrow a phrase from current film studies. Looking at everything at once is inscribed with a distortion, a grimace of the real. This distortion coincides with us looking from his position, and it is the conflation of the gaze and the holy body that gives the film its richness.
Eno's soundtrack with its spare, evocative tintinnabulation is apt punctuation for the film's genuine, gesturing spirituality.