Caravaggio (1986)

Stewing in Rome's underbelly during the late Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo da Caravaggio was plucked from the streets by the Catholic Church to paint austere Biblical exaltations. Derek Jarman masterfully captures not only his rampant flirtations with Roman counterculture, but also beautifully saturates this film with the same delicate attention to the chiaroscuro techniques the painter so expertly crafted. Starring 2007 Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton, The Chronicles of Narnia) in her debut film role, Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings), and Nigel Terry (Excalibur) in the title role, Caravaggio is a lush re-imagining of the volatile life of the 17th-century painter and his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings.

SPECIAL FEATURES
- Restored anamorphic transfer, created from Hi-Def elements
- Video interviews with actress Tilda Swinton, actor Nigel Terry and production designer Christopher Hobbs
- Audio commentary by cinematographer Gabriel Beristain
- Rare audio and video interviews with Derek Jarman
- Storyboard, notebook, production photo and design sketch galleries
- Original theatrical trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
- Liner notes by film critic/producer Colin MacCabe Product Description

Chapeaux, Gentlemen, a Feast for the Eye

I remember seeing this film in theaters when it first came out. I was so struck by the shadowy drama and sparkling wit of the imagery that I dragged EVERYONE I KNEW to see it. They still have my fingermarks on their arms.

Jarman's film is not a biography in the strict sense. Rather, he uses Caravaggio's paintings and a loose chronology of events as a point of departure to present his own musings on art, love, sexuality and its politics. The photography is painterly in the best sense of the word and evokes the period acutely. The cast is splendid, Tilda Swindon absolutely glows on screen, Sean Bean is as feral as a tomcat, and Nigel Terry is believably world-weary, a prisoner of his vision and debauchery.

Jarman makes excellent use of anachronistic elements in the film to point out the relevance of those issues to the present day. My favorite scene shows a Vatican functionary, wearing nothing but his nightcap, sitting in a porcelain bathtub and typing on a manual typerwriter...in the 15th century! The witticisms are unmistakeable and very ably presented. Ironically, they make the whole film seem even more convincingly Baroque.

Video was the last time this film was available, and I'm very glad that someone had the nerve to reissue it on DVD. It is a very long time coming. May 29, 2008

A Remarkable Film

"Caravaggio"

A Remarkable Film

Amos Lassen

"Caravaggio" by Derek Jarman is a beautiful visionary art film which is the director's take on the life of Caravaggio. Nigel Terry and Sean Bean are the lovers in Jarman's meditation on sexuality, criminality and art. Jarman fictionalizes Caravaggio's life by using the works of the artist as a way to see his life. This is a visually beautiful movie as has become Jarman's trademark. Here the actors and actresses are also beautiful and Sean Bean is amazing as Caravaggio's lover, Ranucio. When he is on the screen, he owns the movie. He possesses great animal magnetism, sexual energy and wild persona grips the film and moves it forward.
Like all of Jarman's films, this is not a mainstream movie. There are several anachronisms here--modern musical instruments play at the parties, 17th century merchants use hand-held calculators, scribes write on typewriters and servants are dressed in modern dinner jackets. I am not sure what this means but I suppose it is to show that the story of Caravaggio is timeless.
We do not know much about the life of Caravaggio and this film does not reflect the little that we know. The merits of Jarman's narrative are debatable but unimportant when thinking about this film. The strength of "Caravaggio" is the wonderful cinematography and the incorporation of his artwork into the film. The color tones of the film seem to have come directly from the artist's palette; they are that strong and beautiful. Therefore the movie has the look of an actual painting.
This is unlike any biographical film you will ever see. We get a satire on the shallowness of the art scene of the 80's and we find that fact and fiction merge. Caravaggio's themes were sex, death, redemption and finding the sacred within the profane. He lived at a time when homosexuality was a crime that carried the death sentence and political intrigues usually involved death in a society defined by the idea of "strangling the boy for the purity of his scream".
Visually this is a stunning look at a man whose life exuded danger, excitement, violence and decadence but who elevated the lives of ordinary people to the status of Baroque masterpieces.
May 7, 2008

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