| Radical Faerie Movie Night: SEBASTIANE! |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|10:10 am] |
Before Mel Gibson butchered Jesus in The Passion of the Christ,
Derek Jarman skewered a saint in Sebastiane!
Filmed in Sardinia, and acted entirely in Latin, Jarman's film follows the last days of Saint Sebastiane. Sebastiane was a Roman Soldier during the reign of the emperor Diocletian. When it is revealed that Sebastiane has converted to Christianity he and certain men from his legion are exiled to the desert. There he is forced to recant his faith in Christ or be tortured by his captain. Needless to say he is tortured, and eventually martyred for his faith, as well as his unwillingness to submit to the sexual advances of his captain.
Sebastiane is a visually exciting film, loaded with tons of gratuitous nudity and explicit homoeroticism. But what I found highly intriguing was the actual lack of Christianity in Sebastiane's faith. A lot of the language that he uses for Christ is in comparison to classical Gods like Apollo and Adonis a man beloved of Gods. I don't even know that the name Jesus was ever mentioned at all. Just these descriptions of the Christian God that were as if he had fallen in love with Christ and not actually converted to the faith.
The best parts of this film were the slow parts. Jarman spent about ten minutes or more on a scene of two men frolicking in a pool of water and lovingly touching each other. It was absolutely beautiful to watch. It did little to advance the plot of the film, though it did enhance the sexual tension of the captain.
The torture scenes are not so bad in this film. In fact they were pretty tame as torture goes. More often than anything it looked like they were play-acting at torture instead of actually torturing him. Though the sand on a sunburn scene was pretty bad, if only from experiential memory. And as far as play-acting goes, these men were obviously not soldiers. I've seen more realistic fake sword sparring at the renaissance fair than here. And their spearwork, their archery? No. Terrible.
The music was by Brian Eno, which was kind of a shocker actually. Not that he wouldn't do this film, just that I wasn't expecting it. The music was pretty tame as things went, a soft undertone to the film.
Was Sebastiane a good movie? Not particularly. Was it a sexy movie? Well, yes. Very. Would I watch it again? Sure.
Does this film deserve an X rating? NO. Not in the slightest. There are a lot of full frontal men, but there's no actual sex ever. There's touching, kissing, and that's about it. But, this film came out in the 70's, 1976 in fact, so I guess any kind of love between men and actual male nudity might have constituted enough material for an X rating.
If you want to buy a copy of Sebastiane, it's available on DVD from Amazon.com. |
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