This film is not a religious film. But this film is not an anti- religious film. This film is about the rejection of a group of men banned out of society to some outlandish deserted area and what happens among them who have nothing to do and are under the command of an officer who is banned exactly the same way. First they are obsessed by sex since it is the main human activity they cannot have, at least in a normal heterosexual way. So they live that sexual obsession in jokes, in some brutality, in some dreams or some homosexual surrogate activities. But even so hunting a wild pig and killing it, having fake fights with wooden weapons are definitely not enough to satisfy their frustrations and their desires. If you are the officer you can order one simple soldier to satisfy your sexual impulse, but otherwise we are in a plain case of playing or raping. The film, apart from showing the homosexual relation between two soldiers reveals the fact that there are two Christians in the group and they are taken as scapegoats. One of them is Sebastian and he is tortured by the officer and by the soldiers because he refuses to fight because Christians do not fight. The officer takes a great pleasure in whipping him, torturing him day and night, tying him down in the sunshine for hours, trying to force him to accept to let him make love to him, and strangely enough he does not rape him though Sebastian refuses to service him. The soldiers do not touch him because he is the officer's prey, toy, possession. But they get even with the second Christian they torture physically just because he is a Christian. That is segregation and racism, hostility based on pure and simple religious rejection. The person who is not like you, who is different from you is a natural prey to your frustrations and compensations of these.Then the killing of Sebastian the way it is known in Catholic and Christian folklore is of course staged by the officer who makes each man shoot one arrow at Sebastian and even the second Christian is forced to shoot his own arrow, and Sebastian is abandoned to die of his wounds in the sunshine. But the film is targeting a far more important and universal theme. Anyone who is different is the potential victim of such persecution, and Derek Jarman is of course speaking of men who are gay in our society, at least in his society in 1976 and how they were rejected, ostracized, violated, raped, brutalized and even persecuted by the police. And beyond this sexual segregation the human species, hence humanity, has always cultivated segregation, persecution and apartheid against those they classify as different. The human species, hence humanity, is a segregative species. This is a deeply pessimistic vision but the evolution on such a subject is slow, very slow, and can take two steps forwards and three or four backwards just afterwards. The most fascinating and strongest aspect of the film is the way Derek Jarman show suffering as being a beautiful experience. Sebastian transforms his torture into a direct contact with Jesus and God. He transforms the sun into the kiss of God. He finds his love in his being tortured, but his love goes to Jesus and God because his suffering is the proof of Jesus's and God's existence: they exist because he believes in them and because he is made to suffer because of this belief. His suffering casts his belief in bronze and Jesus and God in gold. Then the plastic beauty of these bodies mostly nude or quasi-nude is just the mirage that Derek Jarman sends into our minds and our eyes: the mirage that the film is only about the beauty of male bodies, these bodies that are nothing but vanity because the only important thing is not the bodies of these men but their moral or ethical integrity, and then life and death are like the two sides of the same coin when you are a Christian. Life is dedicated to longing for death to rejoin the company of Jesus and God. And death is the escape door from the limited and locked up physical life into the eternal life of the soul in communion with God and Jesus, in absolute union with them. When we finally reach that understanding, that deep communion with man's spiritual dream and project, the fact that they are in the nude, undressed does not count any more We do not see it any more, or we do not feel any appeal in that nudity.That's the real project of Derek Jarman: to make us reach beyond erotic or pornographic voyeurism to lift our souls and minds to the contemplation of purity in the midst of total perdition and sacrilege, perdition of human integrity and sacrilege of human perversity. This film should thus not be restricted because it is the most beautiful lesson of visionary enlightenment.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

As soft porn erotica for soft porn erotica sake goes, this isn't a bad production. Obligatory hunks prancing around a remote seaside Roman political refugee camp in their diapers and assorted battle garb, these boys have too much time on their hands, so Roman sexual behavior being what it was in those days, there's a fair amount of male-male hanky panky going on plus the main story of the task master guard in(unrequited)love with the Christian pretty boy movie namesake: Sebastiane.Well after much nothing but fondling and slo-mo body contact the story progresses to the grand finale which is obviously a play on our hero's name in relationship to biblical characters. Don't wanna have too many spoilers here, but if you have some time to kill and nothing better to do, might as well see what 30+ year old gay films passed off as historical drah-mah is all about.

While not his strongest film, Sebastiane is classic Derek Jarman. The movie captures the potential for violence and lust in a small group of exiled young soldiers. As with all Jarman, the visuals here are more important than any dialog, and they wash over the viewer in waves of longing and fear-inducing power. The film meditates on intersections of longing, desire, faith and obsession, especially as they play out between Severus and Sebastiane.Sebastiane's "obsessive" Christian faith rivals the lustful obsession of Serverus for this unattainable man. The movie doesn't flinch from showing how brutal desire can be; it is a hard master for both Serverus and Sabastiane. What I came away from the film with is the powerful question: What horrors and debasements will we all put ourselves through for the object of our lust?

It's surprising more comments haven't been posted for this production which, at the time of its original release, created quite a stir. Perhaps the film's failure to create a continuing subgenre of imitators is to blame, but then, that makes it a one-of-a-kind effort and efforts of this sort deserve remembering as well.Looking back on the film from more than a quarter of a century, it seems clear that normal criteria concerning story, dialog, and character simply don't apply here. Instead, one must simply view it as a feverish, almost hallucinogenic fantasy drenched with homoerotic, sadomasochistic imagery that is played out against a sun-drenched dreamscape on the Sardinian coast. Think of it as a high-class photo shoot for an avant-garde fashion magazine specializing in loincloths and Roman military paraphernalia.Having the dialog spoken in Latin can be dismissed as a "gimmick" but actually it adds to the film's air of mystery and unreality. If only some of the anachronisms could have been avoided!Considering the possibilities, there's surprisingly little sex here, though it's a subject often discussed and, indeed, the whole film is imbued with an air of desire and yearning. On the other hand, there's a plethora of bondage and torture. Leonardo Treviglio, who plays the title character and who spends most of the movie in no more than a loincloth, is hanged by his wrists and flogged, burned with a flame, staked out spreadeagle-style under the scorching sun, and finally shot full of arrows. Curiously, his most memorable torment is also the simplest. Barney James, playing the commanding officer who's torn by conflicting emotions, takes a handful of sand and grinds it into Treviglio's bare torso, blurring the lines between pleasure and pain, between lust and longing. It's a memorable moment in a movie that is now half-forgotten ... like one of those dreams which fade from the mind after you awaken, even though you try to recall the details.