What an exhilarating, entrancing, searing piece of work. Oh, it did cost me a bit to go along with the dialogue so easily, but the whole thing was just fantastic. The ensemble cast seems to be having the time of their lives speaking all of these juicy dramatic lines. Tilda Swinton, especially, manages to go beyond my expectations to deliver an all-time worthy performance. This is what she's best at, this sort of icy, hypnotizing, ethereal role, and she more than delivers. In a film full of wonderful performances, she stands at the very top. The whole thing is just completely and utterly mesmerizing, impossible to look away.

My advice is to avoid this film and try and see a stage version instead.It is highly unfair, I think, to criticise Marlowe's writing capabilities based on this rather terrible rendition of his play Edward II, as another user has commented on. In this film lines are swapped between characters, scenes are drastically changed, new scenes are added in and key scenes and characters are omitted. The whole film stands as a rather disfigured version of the original play.Of course perhaps it could be said also to be unfair to criticise it's lack of loyalty to Marlowe's script, after all it is an adaptation. Looking at it simply as a movie it still creates rather laughable viewing. The actors talents are wasted on the directors odd obsession with the surreal and abstract, which is just simply random and out of place. And an odd musical cameo from Annie Lennox just adds to the madness.To look at the positives yes there are some imaginative shots and several scenes are performed and presented well but as a whole it appears as a rather flimsy and hastily put together film that would be more suited as a three part drama on ITV.

"Edward II" (1991) by Derek Jarman is a variation on Christopher Marlowe's 16th-century play "The Troublesome Reign of Edward II" which tells the story of England openly gay King Edward, and his relationship with Piers Gaveston that bitterly angers his queen, Isabella of France, "The French She-Wolf", and eventually leads to his fall - he will lose his Kingdom and his life. If I had not known that Jarman was a painter and a Caravaggio admirer, I would've guessed immediately after first 5 minutes or so. His usage of light and shadows was amazing. His lack of historical settings and staging the film among the bare walls as well as including many anachronisms, such as modern clothes and cigarette smoking gave the old story timeless feel. Tilda Swinton as a woman scorned never looked so ethereal and breathtakingly beautiful. For her acting, she won the best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival in 1991. "Edward II" is a gripping film that is in the same league as Julie Taymor's stunning adaptation of Shakespeare's "Titus" but it is certainly not for everyone.7.5/10

I found this movie nice, but somehow strange. I would have found it better if they had either really modernized the script and the settings, as they did it with "Romeo and Julia" starring Leonardo DiCaprio, or they had set it completely in a medieval world, with big sets etc (possibly they hadn't the budget for that), but I didn't like the simple way the sets and the film was made. Still, Edward II is a play that should get the respect it deserves (=more adaptions into movies)