FORM-Idea

Sebastiane & A Life in Four ChaptersWith the number of LGBTQI themed film projects increasing it is fascinating looking back at queer themed films of the past.  As well as the pioneering directors who made them and examine how by creating this work they helped to make the current crop of films possible.     London’s British Film Institute this summer has screened these two queer classics, two of the most significant gay films from the 70’s/80’s and in watching them it’s fascinating seeing just how far we have come.

Derek Jarman is perhaps one of the most significant Queer directors of the last century. His output as a filmmaker, before his life was tragically cut short by AIDS, is particularly impressive given the hostile political anti-queer environment he worked in.   One of the most significant features, which he co-directed with Paul Humfress, was called Sebastiane, made in 1976.  The film is a homoerotic look at the life of the religious icon, Saint Sebastian, a Catholic saint who would die a martyr.   All the dialogue in the film is in Latin and in many ways, the film is very much a forerunner of Jarman’s subsequent Caravaggio, which is widely seen now as his commercial breakthrough.  Sebastiane though, is no less a worthy cinematic achievement, with its beautiful reimaging of this Roman soldier’s life.  A man whose life is in many ways a metaphor for the persecution of the queer community as a whole.    Particularly those living in the United Kingdom at the time, Jarman’s home, which saw the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spearhead the passage of Clause 28, a piece of legislation which made it illegal for local authorities to “promote homosexuality”.  This law would blight the lives of an entire generation of lesbians and gay men in Great Britain and would remain in effect until the year 2000, overlapping much of Jarman’s career.

Seen in this context Jarman’s 1976 feature is so refreshing and ground-breaking.  Jarman depicts the events, which led to Sebastiane being stripped of his rank and exiled to a desolate island.    Once there he is expected to serve with a small regiment, something he refuses to do and is keen now to simply practice his new faith, Christianity.  Both of these acts result in his torture and then ultimately his death. Once though he is executed, soldiers drop to their knees realising their error and begin to worship his broken body.  It is not hard to see what Jarman was saying in this film and it is that despite the hostility the gay community faced at the time they would find a way to triumph and in doing so they would leave a legacy behind.

The other film in this BFI season was Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, a poetic exploration of the life Japan’s first truly international author.  A man, whose sensational death, a Japanese ritual suicide called “seppuku”, would overshadow much of his life.  Mishima hoped his suicide would be the catalyst for the return of the Emperor as the country’s political head of state, something which did not happen.  Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters with its driving Philip Glass score, strives to show the man as a whole rather than just his final act.   To do this Schrader divided the film into four chapters and two different periods, the present day as well as the key events in Mishima’s past, which led him to this final destination.  The film also hints at his homosexuality (something Mishima’s family fought hard against even denying the use of the author’s most overtly gay work, Forbidden Colours).  One of the most telling moments in the film comes when the actor Ken Ogata, who plays Mishima, stares longingly at a portrait of Saint Sebastian, appearing to find both the man and his martyrdom appealing.  Identifying with the saint, Mishima would a few years later carry out his ritual suicide.

Paul Schrader the director is best known as the screenwriter for the legendary Taxi Driver, as well as the screenwriter and director for the equally famous American Gigolo.  Both films examine a kind of tortured masculinity, a theme Schrader returns to in Mishima.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and Sebastiane taken together highlight a time during which filmmakers struggled to tell truly queer stories and had to constantly fight the constraints placed upon them, and yet despite this they made two classic films, which would go on to inspire generations to come.

Sebastiane was screened as part of the Big Screen Classic series, while Mishima : A Life in Four in Four Chapters was screened as part of a BFI strand celebrating the scores of Philip Glass called Shifting Layers: The Film Scores of Philip Glas.