Caravaggio (1986) User Reviews

Poetic and haunting film

[Falconeer · 8/10 · 26 January 2007]

Derek Jarman has crafted a beautiful and unique work of art in "Caravaggio". Perhaps the fact that I have a great love for the work of the real Michelangelo Caravaggio, influences my judgment just a bit; It was quite enjoyable to see the paintings come to life, and to witness how they might have actually been created. In fact, much of Jarmans poetic film has the look of a lush, living painting. There is much to admire here besides the aesthetics; the talented and beautiful cast, led by Nigel Terry, the intense-looking Sean Bean, as Ranuccio, and the elegant Tilda Swinton, as Lena; the woman loved by two very passionate, and tormented men. The acting is all around excellent, but Nigel Terry as Michelangelo really stands out. He is great to watch, and brings life to a man the world knows not so much about. Also actor Dexter Fletcher was quite funny and likable in his portrayal of the younger Caravaggio. More than a historical, biographical account of the painter, this is more the study of a classic love triangle. Caravaggio's models were mostly street people, many of them also criminals, and it seemed that he often became personally involved with his subjects. His love for 'Lena' seems to be as strong, if not stronger, than his love for 'Ranuccio'. And this divided love has tragic consequences, for all involved. I didn't find "Caravaggio" an overly gay film, as the subject wasn't focused on obsessively, like other films of this nature tend to do. The love affair between Lena and Michelangelo was given as much attention as the relationship between him and Ranuccio. Therefore those who might feel a little uncomfortable with the subject matter, need not be, as it is actually quite accessible. Recommended, especially for admirers of the painter Caravaggio. As mentioned earlier, there are scenes that are modeled exactly on the paintings. To see these come alive is really something to behold. There is a new region 2 DVD from Germany that features the most beautiful transfer I have ever seen of any film. It comes close to "High Definition" quality, I recommend this as well.

As beautiful as it is confusing...

[ElMaruecan82 · 6/10 · 30 October 2021]

I tend to define myself as an artist and I consider my mind broad enough to welcome any artistic license coming from a director whom I also consider an artist... but when a historical biopic supposedly tells you the story of an artist of the caliber of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and by some burst of inspiration, the director Derek Jarman decides to insert anachronistic details that go from people wearing suits, tuxedos or sights as incongruous as a bike or a typewriter... I can help but feel a certain resistance to whatever should appeal to me at that moment. To put it simply, that turned me off.

We're speaking of a few random scenes that didn't affect the story in a way or another, and their needlessness made me even angrier... I know there's a way to interpret everything, maybe some iconoclastic approach to a man who himself was a revolutionary painter and initiator of the Baroque school, with its high contrast of lights and dark shadows and very expressive style, maybe it was Jarman's ambition to pay tribute to the painter and the project took him so long and underwent so many incidents he didn't care for realism, using the 'Italy of his memory' according to his photographer, but there are so many magnificent shots in the film that recreate the texture of the latest years of the Renaissance and even the color of the initial painting that my mind kept wondering Why? What was the purpose to all that?

Now, I've said it... and having said that, I can say that I enjoyed the look of the film and its recreation of some of Caravaggio's paintings, not that I could recall them all, in fact, I'm not familiar with his work but that didn't matter at all, any scene could have been painting material and last films to made me feel that were "Barry Lyndon" and "Cries and Whispers" (with its long contemplative monologues told in voice-over, the film did have a Bergmanian quality of its own). The use of contrast, the dust and even the dirt looked somewhat appealing creating a sort of shadowy texture that enriched the skin complexion, it's a marvel of recreation and the first twenty minutes had me literally hooked. The part with Dexter Fletcher playing young Caravaggio (the one who impersonated Bacchus in a famous painting) with the ambiguous strange relationship going with a Cardinal (Michael Gough) was my favorite.

The second part is more of a ptachwrok of scenes where it's difficult to keep a certain feeling of continuity but we get the attraction between the painter (now older, played by Nigel Terry) and two models (Sean Bean who's way too good looking not to be distracting ) and Tilda Swinton. The scenes works so well visually but the narration keeps us in the shadow, and maybe it betrays the fact that Jarman was so immersed in his character that he only left us a few breeches to wriggle through, as a character study, I didn't find the passionate artist or whatever wood made the fire of his creativity burn, the passion was there but it was diluted in that feeling of detachment, of randomness that made it very hard to follow... it's hard to make movies about painters, to understand their painting, you've got to see their vision, to hear their mind and I guess I simply couldn't connect myself and my mind was stubbornly sticking to these iconoclasts details that they gave me the feeling tat Jackman didn't care for authenticity, only for mood.

In my prime as a movie watcher, I would have given the film another 'chance' (or myself) but I don't think I would get it any better, anyway, it is a good film but looks more like an art-house for which the word 'pretentious' was invented, a picture meant for students, rather than a biopic for the average watcher. I didn't like the film for several reasons and perhaps the most vivid one is that it makes me feel like a conventional schmuck who can't enjoy art or understand it. I wouldn't call it pretentious but there's something rather vain in the way one appropriate himself a character and twists his life like that, even for the sake of art. Or maybe to use a hackneyed version, I didn't get it and now, I'm among the users who rated the film low enough to earn it a rating above 7...

Not great history, but intense with flashes of brilliance

[Red-125 · 7/10 · 25 March 2012]

Caravaggio (1986) was co-written and directed by Derek Jarman. As a biography of the great Baroque painter, this movie falls short. However, it's full of exciting events, color, and--yes--actual scenes where a painter is working at his art. Most films about artists show everything but the art. This movie brings us into the artist's studio. We see the models, we see him creating his paintings, and we see the finished results.

Caravaggio was the most gifted of the Italian Baroque painters. His artistic style influenced artists in all of Europe for generations. However, his personal life was a disaster--duels, brawls, murder, and imprisonment. He died on a barren beach, although his talent was recognized and he could have been wealthy and famous. (Because he was so talented, his patrons managed to keep him out of prison most of the time, but, after the murder, he had to leave Rome. He wandered all over Italy, and died in Naples, far from his home near Milan.)

Several caveats about the film. It's bloody, although not as gruesome as Longoni's film-- also called Caravaggio, and also reviewed by me for IMDb. There's a good deal of suggested sex, both homosexual and heterosexual. The director has chosen to add anachronisms, for reasons best know to himself. Not only are these jarring, but they are strange. If you're going to show a typewriter, why make it an old Royal manual? Bizarre.

The acting is uniformly excellent. The celebrated actor Nigel Terry plays Caravaggio, and the equally celebrated Sean Bean is his lover Ranuccio. Tilda Swinton plays Caravaggio's muse, Lena. This was Swinton's first acting role, and she is superb. Even in 1986, her androgynous persona was in place.

However, in one breathtaking scene, she has been given an elegant gown. She holds it up in front of her body, and then suddenly lets down her lovely long hair. The androgynous look vanishes instantly, and we see the extremely attractive woman emerge. That scene alone makes the film worth seeing.

I saw the movie on DVD, where it worked well enough. However, this is a film I think would do better on the large screen. Caravaggio is a brilliant, but flawed, movie. It's worth seeing if you love Caravaggio's art, as I do. It's interesting and it has flashes of brilliance. However, if you want to get a better sense of Caravaggio's life and of the milieu in which he lived, I would opt for Longoni's film. Bloodier and more violent, but without typewriters, automobiles, and cigarettes.

Remarkable

[peedur · 21 October 2003]

Few moviegoers would know that the real Caravaggio was a convicted criminal and even by today's standards, a hell raiser. Rome's police records list fourteen citations in six years, from public nuisance to several violent assaults. In May of 1606 he murdered a friend, one Ranuccio Tomassoni in a sword fight. Added to these lurid details, his sexual interests show that he freely drifted from the Vatican's ordained model. This makes Caravaggio an interesting person, but a highly complex candidate for a biographic investigation on film.

While Derek Jarman's film captures (with delightful conceit) many of the surface details of Caravaggio's life, it's a work of startling genius because it succeeds on a far more profound level. Jarman tells the story of Caravaggio rather like Caravaggio would paint, infusing it (effortlessly) with the central themes of his life's deepest convictions, creating a portrait which reflects the subject and the artist with equal relevance. What's more, many of the same themes that have been identified with both artists - sexuality, transcendence, violence, censorship, politics (religious/sexual) and the tumultuous source of creative identity are present in both men. It works as very few films do. This is also an unusually accessible film for Derek Jarman. The performances are entertaining and it's filmed with astounding beauty and simplicity. This film is a masterpiece.

However, because of it's homosexual themes and personal tone, "Caravaggio" is likely to be appreciated only by those viewers who weary of film as simple diversion and long for something more challenging. This is a powerful artistic statement, but it flew under the radar during a decade of British film-making where "Gandhi", "Chariots of Fire" and "A Room With A View" represented the best of what was being made. While those films are great in their way, this film value is greater in terms of bravura and personal expression. See it if you can.

Uneven, but captures the earthiness of the artist

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 11 July 2023]

Standing before a painting by Caravaggio is an experience, particularly when the emotion of a dramatic scene is heightened by his intense lighting, attention to detail, and chiaroscuro technique. It's a style that's instantly recognizable, and was influential far beyond Caravaggio's life (1571-1610). Aside from a wide range of artists who followed, like Rembrandt, Velazquez, and David, Martin Scorsese said that there were scenes in Mean Streets (1973) that were framed and lit like direct homages to Caravaggio.

Derek Jarman's historical drama succeeds in giving a taste of the man behind the paintings, capturing a certain sense of the sordid way he lived his life, which was often among "low" people and violent. At its best, we feel Caravaggio's earthy background and the uneasy bargain he struck with the Church and wealthy patrons. I smiled over his meeting with the Pope, who in this fictional telling, confided his desire simply to keep the "quo in the status" and didn't care about finding the truth about a prostitute's murder. The prostitute was Fillide Melandroni ("Lena" here, played by 26-year-old Tilda Swinton in her very first film) who appeared in several of Caravaggio's works, and who was probably murdered by him. I also loved the occasions when we see paintings recreated by those posing for them with an astonishing likeness, like the one of Saint Jerome in his study.

Quite a bit of what was shown seems to have been more of a reflection of the director than Caravaggio, however. Jarman didn't seem to have a problem freely bending history, saying among other things that "people tend to think that history is immutable, that there is something called reality." He didn't sugarcoat Caravaggio as others might, but downplayed his brawling and violence, and decided against actual evidence that Caravaggio was bisexual. Among other things, he infers that he molested a child servant that he purchases from a poor family, and that he himself was molested by a priest, his patron. There are elements that could fall under artistic license as interpretation, and there are elements that simply aren't accurate historically, which is a shame.

Jarman also occasionally used modern items from the present, like calculators or radios, I believe as an homage to Caravaggio, who sometimes employed modern dress on his Biblical figures. In the paintings this brings the legends to life, giving them an immediacy in what was then the present; in this film, it just seems disjointed and odd. I have other quibbles, such as the amount of time spent on the deathbed scene spread out through the film, while there was very little on the artist's craftsmanship. He was wise to keep it to 93 minutes and to avoid trying to be comprehensive though, and I'm glad he cared enough about Caravaggio to make this film.

A Bio-Film With A Risque Edge

[strong-122-478885 · 6/10 · 12 March 2018]

Unlike any other bio-film - "Caravaggio" (the fictionalized story of said 16th Century, Italian painter) brings the viewer right into the artist's studio.

This film's strengths are in its superb cinematography, its fine cast, and, last, but not least, the marvelous works of Michelangelo Caravaggio, who was nothing short of being a startling genius.

Caravaggio, whose art themes centred around sex, death, and redemption, is considered to be the greatest of the post-Renaisance painters.

This controversial bio-film explores the artist's life, which was, indeed, very troubled by the extremes of burning passion and artistic radicalism. Here Caravaggio is depicted as a brawler, gambler, and drunkard with bisexual tendencies, who employed street people, harlots and hustlers as his models.

Directed by Derek Jarman - "Caravaggio" contains several surprising anachronisms that don't rightly fit into the 16th Century landscape, such as a bar lit with electric lights, a character using an electronic calculator, and the sound of the occasional car honking its horn outside of Caravaggio's studio.

"Caravaggio" is certainly an intriguing piece of film-making that's sure to be enjoyed by any fan of the avant-garde.

Absolutely exquisite art film with Sean Bean stealing it

[moviefarie · 10/10 · 12 August 2004]

This beautiful visionary art film based on the director's take of the life of Caravaggio was worth the almost 7 years it took to make it. Derek Jarman had the brilliant sense to use Nigel Terry and Sean Bean as the lovers in this meditation on sexuality, criminality and art. This film is more of a fictionalization on Caravaggio using the artist's works as a way to pursue the story of the artist. It is beautiful, as are the actors and actresses, and Sean Bean is a revelation in this very early role, as he plays Ranucio, the love interest of Caravaggio. When he is on screen he steals the movie, as his animal magnetism, sexual energy, and wild persona grip the film and propel the story forward. This is an adult film with homosexual themes and might not be for everyone, but if one is adult and has a sense of taste, and loves art movies, this is a 10 out of 10.

Visually stunning but the screenplay's sudden jumps in time are disconcerting

[JuguAbraham · 7/10 · 26 September 2022]

Lovely production design and colors, especially for scenes where actors are the models for painter Caravaggio, including one with the Cardinal without his cassock! The young Tilda Swinton steals her scenes, as does Derek Fletcher playing young Caravaggio, Derek Jarman's jumps in time are disconcerting, e.g., use of a typewriter, an electronic calculator and even a scene in front of a parked truck in a garage.

Derek Jarman's casting is commendable picking actors who some 35 years later are the most sought after actors--Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean. I found Jarman's use of a white sheet as the background of the sitting Pope, quite amusing.

An Artistic Portrait of an Artist by another Artist

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 10/10 · 2 January 2011]

Everything is divided in two concepts: rule and transgression. That it's not a bad thing but for most people it's difficult to accept them, to comprehend them and to make both things interesting. Most of the time we tend to only follow the rules and forget about transgression or even condemn it.

Caravaggio was a transgressionist in terms of art with his painting evoking religious themes using as models simple people, peasants, prostitutes, fishers, creating powerful masterpieces; and a transgressionist with his dangerous lifestyle, sleeping with men and women, getting involved in fights, in one of these fights he killed a man, reason why he ran away to other countries, and then dying at the age of 38. Then we have a filmmaker, an true artist named Derek Jarman who knows how to portray art on film, breaking conventions, trying to do something new and succeeding at it.

To name one of his most interesting films his last "Blue" was a blue screen with voice overs by actors and his own voice telling about his life, his struggle while dying of AIDS, and he manages to be poetic, real about his emotions, and throughout almost 2 hours of one simple blue screen he never makes us bored. Who could be a better director for a project about the life of Caravaggio than a transgressionist like Jarman himself?

The movie "Caravaggio" is wonderful because it combines many forms of art into one film, capturing the nuances of Caravaggio's colors and paintings translated into the film art. It has poetry, paintings, music of the period of the story, sometimes jazz music. All that in the middle of the story of one of the greatest artists of all time.

This is not a usual biopic telling about the artist's life and death in a chronological order, trying to do everything make sense. This is a very transgressional work very similar to "Marie Antoniette" by Sofia Coppola, so it might shock and disappoint those who seek for a conventional story truthful to its period. And just like Coppola's film "Caravaggio" takes an bold artistic license to create its moments. Jarman introduces to the narrative set in the 16th and 17th century, objects like a radio, a motorcycle, a calculator machine among others; sometimes this artistic license works (e.g. the scene where Jonathan Hyde playing a art critic types his review on his typewriter, a notion that we must have about how critics worked that time making a comparison with today's critics, but it would be strange see him writing with a feather, even though it would be a real portrayal).

The movie begins with Caravaggio (played by Nigel Terry) in his deathbed, delusioning and remembering facts of his passionate and impetuous life; his involvement with Lena (Tilda Swinton) and Ranuccio (Sean Bean); memories of childhood (played by Dexter Fletcher); and of course the way he worked with his paintings, admired by everybody in his time.

All of this might seem misguided, some things appear to don't have a meaning but they have. I was expecting a movie more difficult to follow but instead I saw a truly artistic film, not pretentious whatsoever, that knows how to bring Caravaggio's works into life, with an incredible and fascinating mise-èn-scene, in a bright red that jumps on the screen with beauty. Very impressive.

It's an unique and interesting experience. For those who enjoy more conventional and structured biopics try to watch this film without being too much judgemental, you'll learn great things about the Baroque period because it is a great lesson about the period. For those who like new film experimentations or want to watch a Jarman's film here's the invitation. 10/10

Beautiful to look at, but lacking a third dimension

[kingsinead · 4/10 · 23 February 2008]

What we know of Caravaggio suggests a strutting brawler with a healthy sense of entitlement who lived amongst whores and thieves and hustlers and put them on canvas. His works' themes were sex, death, redemption, above all, finding the sacred within the profane. He lived at a time where homosexuality carried a death sentence and political intrigue normally involved fatalities in a society defined by the maxim "strangling the boy for the purity of his scream".

You can't fault Derek Jarman for his cinematography, nor his recreations of Caravaggio's paintings and you certainly can't accuse the man of shying away from the homosexuality. But frankly, Jarman never strays beyond 80s caricature. Italian patronage becomes the 80s London art scene complete with pretty waiters and calculators. Sean Bean is a sexy bit of Northern rough oiling his motorbike. Tilda Swinton performs a transformation worthy of a Mills and Boons ("Why, Miss Lena, without that gypsy headscarf, you're beautiful..."). Jarman provides Caravaggio with a particularly trite motive for the murder which left him exiled.

This could have been a visually stunning treatment of a man whose life was dangerous, exciting, violent and decadent but who nonetheless elevated the lives of ordinary people to the status of Renaissance masterpieces, looked on by Emperors and Kings. Instead, what you get is Pierre et Gilles do Italy. The pretty bodies of young boys are shown to perfection, but never the men who inhabit them. Jarman appears to satirise the London art scene, showing it shallow and pretentious. To use Caravaggio and Renaissance Italy to make the point is to use a silk purse to make a pig's ear. In fairness, this film remains visually stunning, but ultimately as two dimensional as the paintings it describes.

Jarman has to make do with a warehouse in Limehouse instead of the streets of Italy but surely couldn't have done a better job.

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 6 December 2019]

This is not an historic document but instead a more impressionist portrait of the great but troubled artist who is attributed as being a formative part of the baroque movement. Jarman was restricted by a very tight budget, having understood for almost a decade that it was going to be a big budget made available. Needs must and against all the odds he has fashioned a vivid and colourful picture of the painter including the creation of remarkable tableaux of model that seem to perfectly mirror the finished paintings we know. Dexter Fletcher plays the young version of the painter and a mesmerising performance it is too. He would make many more films, if not all as prestigious, before moving into directing with Rocketman his latest. Tilda Swinton makes her feature film debut here and she too excels before, of course, moving on to very much more. So, Jarman has to make do with a warehouse in Limehouse instead of the streets of Italy but surely couldn't have done a better job.

Caravaggio's life would be a natural subject for a great film. This is not it.

[JamesHitchcock · 4/10 · 16 May 2020]

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a drunkard, a gambler and a brawler. He was sexually promiscuous and may have been bisexual. (His paintings often contain erotic depictions of male nudes but not of female ones). He killed a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni during a brawl, although it is uncertain whether this killing was deliberate murder or accidental manslaughter. He was also one of the greatest artists who ever lived and was noted for intensely emotional religious paintings which humanised Christ, his Apostles and other Biblical figures rather than idealising them. For all his tumultuous lifestyle, his biographers seem to agree that he was a sincere Christian believer and that these paintings reflect his own beliefs.

Derek Jarman has obviously studied Caravaggio's paintings in detail, and tries to give his film a visual look which in its striking contrasts of light and dark imitates Caravaggio's own artistic style. A feature of the film is Jarman's use of anachronisms- electric lighting, a motor-bike, the sound of a passing train- which he defended on the basis that Caravaggio's art was also anachronistic, dressing figures from the Bible or Classical antiquity in the fashions of sixteenth century Italy.

We do not, however, see much of those paintings themselves, at least not of the great religious works upon which the painter's reputation largely rests. We do see something of his paintings of pretty naked boys, doubtless because these fit in better with Jarman's agenda, which is more concerned with Caravaggio's complicated sex life than with his art. In this version the killing of Ranuccio occurs because he and Caravaggio are involved in a complicated bisexual love-triangle with a woman.

One reviewer tried to analyse this film in terms of "rules" and "transgression". Jarman clearly cast himself as one of life's transgressors, in revolt against both conventional bourgeois aesthetics and conventional bourgeois ethics, and saw Caravaggio as a kindred spirit. An analysis in these terms, however, is bound to be over-simplistic because it ignores one of the great paradoxes of art. Ever since the rise of Romanticism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries we have expected great artists to be free spirits, in revolt against both conventional bourgeois aesthetics and conventional bourgeois ethics. We have, moreover, anachronistically transferred our post-Romantic expectations onto pre-Romantic artists like Caravaggio.

A great artist, therefore, who rebels against the accepted rules of the society in which he lives is thereby, consciously or unconsciously, conforming to the conventional idea of the artist as rebel. A great artist who does not so rebel is seen as a transgressor against our idea of what an artist should be, and there will be plenty of critics queuing up to deny his greatness. (Attempts to dismiss, say, John Constable as a minor talent have less to do with the quality of his work than with a feeling that there was something not quite artistic about his solidly bourgeois lifestyle; his great rival Turner strikes us as much more satisfyingly bohemian). Or, as James Thurber summarised this paradox, "Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"

Moreover, the Caravaggio we see in this film is not really transgressing against the rules of Renaissance Italian society, at least not against the rules of Renaissance Italian society as interpreted by Derek Jarman. Caravaggio's aristocratic and ecclesiastical patrons all live a debauched lifestyle, not even bothering to hide their debauchery beneath a veneer of hypocrisy; if they don't have a mistress it is because they prefer boys to women. It Caravaggio and Ranuccio sleep around with partners of both sexes, therefore, they are not so much rebelling against social norms as following the example of their social betters.

The story is told in a disjointed fashion, in a series of flashbacks from Caravaggio's deathbed, and is not always easy to follow. The film's main strength is that it is visually attractive; its main weakness is that it tells us a lot about Caravaggio's sex life and little about his art. There have been many men who have had private lives at least as colourful as his, few indeed who have been gifted with his level of genius. His life would be a natural subject for a great film. This is not it. 4/10

Wonderful use of limited resources

[Galder-Sang · 12 November 2004]

What we know of the life of Caravaggio is unfortunately incredibly limited. The narrative of this film does not really reflect that limited knowledge. From the disjunctive remains of one of the most important figures of all western art A narrative has been formed. The merits of this narrative are debatable and ultimately unimportant. The overwhelming strength of this film lies in the superb cinematography and the incorporation of Caravaggio's artwork into the film. Light emanates from an off screen point, bathing the shot in chiaruscuro lighting that was so signature of his work. The color of the film could be taken from his palate directly. Best of all was when his paintings were played out by the actors. The result is no less than a visually stunning presentation.

Caravaggio

[lasttimeisaw · 8/10 · 17 February 2012]

To celebrate my first encounter with Jerman's work, an encouraging 8 out 10 is a steadfast testament. For an experimental and aesthetic essay which occasions a fiery contention concerning the fashioning of art and human's innate struggle for desire, CARAVAGGIO is the perfect standard-bearer in the field.

There are many merits from the film I can recapitulate, firstly, the recreation of Caravaggio's oeuvre is thrillingly overwhelming and a chief accomplishment is the starkly austere setting (a Silver Berlin Bear for its visual shaping that year is the most cogent proof for both), constituting a cocktail of the simplicity from the mundane world and the inexplicable lust from the spiritual concussion.

Secondly, a theatrically radical group of thespians manages to embroider the no-frills narrative, which has been dispatched into several erratic episodes, with some passionately innovative punch, name checking the very young and rookie couple Sean Bean (smoking hot!) and Tilda Swinton (for whom this film is her debut), and as the titled genius, Nigel Terry resembles a doppelgänger image of the artist, while relentlessly contributing a scorching destructive epidemic to the character itself. Other small roles, such as Jack Birkett's Pope, Robbie Coltrane's Scipione Borghese and Dexter Fletcher's younger Caravaggio are all surrealistically wacky.

Thirdly, the film is far from a biographical recount, a downright English accent and many deliberate anachronisms (smoking, typewriter e.g.) are contrived to amplify the zany flare to its cult hut, a phantasmagorical interpretation of the artist's ill-fated life.

Clearly the film could be pigeonholed into a love-it-or-hate-it category like other non- mainstream films from genuine auteurs, and this time, my gut-feeling is being exaltedly dumbfounded.

Art quotes in this film

[tomm-25 · 8/10 · 6 December 2008]

Jarman's filmic imagery is beautiful, VERY Caravaggiesque. And - like good jazz, where a soloist improvisor may play snippets of other, well-known tunes in his/her improvisation - contains scene quotations from great works of art by others NOT Caravaggio. No one has yet mentioned the obvious take on Jacques Louis David's "Death of Marat," nor Jan Vermeer's "Girl with a pearl earring," which are the most obvious to me. There may be others. I'll have to watch it again more closely to see.

This is a strange and wonderful film with many anachronistic jolts and some marvelous acting. When Tilda Swinton looks directly into the camera (making me swoon), she presages her doing so many times three years later in "Orlando."

If this film is to your taste, then see Julie Taymor's "Titus" - her take on The Bard's Titus Andronicus.

pretentious and awful

[worldofgabby · 1/10 · 23 August 2011]

I really hated this film. I have watched many experimental, ambitious, and complex movies that demand much thought and attention from the viewer, but this one was an inexcusable exercise in self-indulgence by the filmmaker. The voice overs contained language which was heartbreakingly beautiful and I wished that more of that intelligence and beauty had been transmitted to the rest of the movie. Instead we get a tawdry pastiche of soft-core pornography which becomes so tedious that, when another perfect male form was displayed I became numb and angry. One would imagine that Caravvagio created his work in a vacuum, and that his art was a product of his violent and transgressive nature only. Having studied art, and being an artist myself, I was looking for some insight into this fascinating man and his revolutionary work. The scenes of him painting were unconvincing and the paintings in progress looked like amateur attempts in figure-drawing. I was able to wrest some meaning from Caravaggio, but that occurred early on and the only reason I kept watching it was the thought that it would kick in and start making some overarching sense. Watching this would lead one to believe that Renaissance Italy was populated mostly by homosexuals with a strong predilection for violent sex, and the clergy who exploited them for their private titillation. "Caravvagio" managed to demean the people it was trying to celebrate, oversimplify a complex individual, and bore and confuse its audience. Only recommended for a committed student of Jarman's work, as the "auteur" was obviously more interested in himself than in the subject.

Gay love is mute in a society that rejects it.

[Dr_Coulardeau · 10/10 · 2 July 2014]

This film deals with a painter of great fame from the end of the Renaissance. It is the story of a man of course but also of his assistant. He literally bought a mute boy out of his misery when he was a small child and took him to his studio to work for him, to grind his colors and prepare his paints. He will of course use the child as a model for some exuberant bacchic scenes overloaded with fruits of all sorts. The mute boy becomes the friend of the painter and little by little this friendship must have become love, real love, the mental and sentimental passion.

On the other hand the artist is attracted by male bodies mostly but in the strength they demonstrate when they are fighting. So he is looking for violence, muscular tension, aggressiveness in males, one body against another, and some compositions of several men demonstrating their power in some scenes implying violence and cruelty. This search for violent brutality excludes love. It is pure desire and one of these men will have a tragic ending because he understood this desire required him to love the artist back and thus to do what he thought the artist wanted him to do. His mistake, especially since it was killing a pregnant woman.

The only one who has the right (the artists granted him that right), the duty (the artists expected him to do what's concerned here), the obligation even to love him back, is the young assistant because that assistant was bought and is the artist's possession, the only person the artist has the duty and the obligation to take care of as if he were his own child. And in this case it is real love from the artist to the assistant and from the assistant to the artist, to and fro and back all the time. This assistant will bring the artist to his own death on his own death bed and he will be the only one able to bring him to death in peace, to grant him death in a way, though it will be for the assistant a tragedy, a drama with a phenomenal solitude afterwards, though this is not explored in the film.

All other men the artists selects on their own strength are supposed to accept his love but definitely not love him back. They do not have that right because the artist only satisfies his own desire but never ever anything that has any real sentimental or mental dimension. He uses these men as satisfying actors in his sexual desire just the same way as he uses them as props in his studio to compose a scene that he can then paint on the canvass.

Living and working close to the Pope, Caravaggio is classified a sodomite but tolerated because of his art, because of the marvelous paintings he can produce. But in this extremely sectarian and fundamentalistic society he is living in he is obliged to mind every step of his and pay for his privilege a very high artistic price. The result is that he is locked up in his sodomite closet and he has no way to get out of it. So his love is nothing but a perversion and he cannot expect from anyone to love him since it would be a perversion too. Then his love is reduced to a gross physical and violent impulse and he takes what he needs to satisfy this impulse, he pays for it since it is nothing but a forbidden fruit that has a very high price, and it is finished. Full stop. Period.

And that is the moment when you start wondering about his assistant. Man cannot live without any love. If any love between two men is impossible as a permanent and stable relation, you have to disguise this relation in a way or another. The mute assistant is perfect since Caravaggio got him when he was six or seven and he has a very clear function and position to satisfy. The relation is seen by most people more like the relation between a father and a son and the possible sexual dimension of it might very well never have been consumed. Art least this part was not important. What was important was the tears shed by the assistant when his master died, when he brought him to death.

I would easily say that any man longs for such a relation that is not and cannot be carnal. Men finds that in younger people who are their sons or close male relatives, at times younger men who need some mentor or leader or adviser. It is love but draped in some age or cultural dependency that makes it acceptable. Such a relation will never be sexual because it would be antagonistic with what the passion it contains means.

And that distance in time between Caravaggio and us is clearly identified in the film with all kinds of anachronistic sounds or objects: electricity at the end of the 15th century, motorbikes, cars, trains, helicopters, cigarettes, etc. Has the world improved or is it still the same? I would say that in 1886 it probably looked pretty the same as around 1600. But it may also mean that luckily progress will bring some new way of looking at life and love.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Very disappointed

[wcheg · 1/10 · 23 November 2008]

I went to see this film last night at the National Film Theatre in London, as a birthday treat. It was the the first time I've seen it, and I think it has now overtaken the dreadful "Twister" as the worst film I have ever seen. Disjointed for no reason, self indulgent and full of imagery that oscillates from the crass and obvious to the obscure and unintelligible, not particularly beautifully or grimily shot, I really don't understand why this is considered classic, gay or otherwise. I normally enjoy films that push boundaries or even films that are hard to watch because of their length or unusual cinematography. But this was truly, truly awful.

Strange, artistic, memorable

[Scoopy · 7 March 1999]

This is not a mainstream movie. You may be very distracted by the presence of jokey 20th century anachronisms in this otherwise grave movie about the artistic genius, Caravaggio. 17th century merchants use hand-held calculators, modern instruments play at the parties, local scribes use typewriters, servants dress in modern dinner jackets. I sure don't know what it all means. I guess you can impute many meanings to it.

You may also be irritated by the director in his insistence that everyone is motivated by homoerotic impulses. This facet of the presentation is really more about Derek Jarman than Caravaggio.

Well, I'm not sure that the movie has much to say about Caravaggio at all. After all, Caravaggio shocked his era with his revisionist hagiography - saints with peasant faces, torn clothes and dirty fingernails - probably realistic but iconoclastic in its time, and contrary to a century of previous tradition. Moreover, Caravaggio almost invented the modern system of a consistently represented light source, showing the actual impact of light on his subjects. These key points are barely touched by the script.

But I think you probably should just let those irritations wash over you, and accept the movie for what it is. It uses the style and mood of his paintings to reflect his life, and it incorporates that precise aesthetic into the movie's own visuals. The movie looks like what Caravaggio's own moving pictures might have looked like if he could have created them in 1600.

Is it a good movie? Who knows? It's not so well remembered after a decade or so, but it exhibits a memorable gift for creating and sustaining a mood, and for breathing life into Caravaggio's canvases. It also speculates about the everyday life that must have circulated around the creation of those masterpieces.

I was willing to forgive a lot of artistic pretension and rhetorical dialogue for the superb visuals and atmosphere, and I took vivid memories away from the film. You may feel the same way.

A strange, sensual, and visually striking movie

[kijii · 8/10 · 28 November 2016]

This film is No. 93 on the BFI's Top 100, and it was a great discovery for me. The only reason that I was even led to it at all was because it was on the BFI's Top 100.

Caravaggio (1986) is a British film directed by Derek Jarman. The film is a strange, sensual, visually striking telling of the life of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio — with a great deal of poetic license.

Jarman's movie is involved with the love triangle of Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), Lena (Tilda Swinton) and Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and dwells upon Caravaggio's use of street people, drunks and prostitutes as models for his intense, usually religious paintings. As with Caravaggio's own use of contemporary dress for his Biblical figures, Jarman depicts his Caravaggio in a bar lit with electric lights, or another character using an electronic calculator.

The film is notable for its texture and attention to detail, the intense performances and the idiosyncratic humor. By presenting Caravaggio as one of the founders of the chiaroscuro technique, it helped give expression to the legend that was beginning to form around him. According to this film, he died of wounds received in a knife fight. Jarman's Caravaggio also suggests that his legend ultimately eclipsed his enormous talent.

Caravaggio was the first time that Jarman worked with Tilda Swinton and was her first film role. The film also features Robbie Coltrane, Dexter Fletcher, Michael Gough and Nigel Davenport. The production designer was Christopher Hobbs who was also responsible for the copies of Caravaggio paintings seen in the film.

THIS Michelangleo is NOT the Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer Michelangleo that we associate with the Medici Family in Florence, the Pietà, the sculpture of David, or the ceiling paintings of the Sistine Chapel.

THIS Michelangleo emerged later (late 16th and early 17th Centuries) in Southern Italy. Little was recently known of him until his rediscovery in the 20th Century. Though he only left behind some 70 paintings, he is virtually the father of Baroque painting.

The original intention of this film was to make a conventional biopic of Caravaggio in Italy. However, due to financial problems, the filming had to be moved back to London. Here, on a smaller budget and over a longer period, Jarman loosely related events in Caravaggio's life by using imagined interactions of he and the models in his paintings. In this way, much of the film centers on the day-by-day workings in Caravaggio's studios AND—very importantly to Jarman (himself a painter)—on the paintings themselves. Thus, this unique film recreates (as part of its fabric) Tableaux vivants of such paintings as: Medusa, Boy with a Basket of Fruit, Bacchus, St. Jermome, and Saint Catherine.

The entire film is told in flashback, showing us Caravaggio's memories from his deathbed, with his trusted life-long assistant, friend, model, and companion, Jersualeme (Spencer Leigh), at his side. As revealed in flashback, Caravaggio had purchased Jersualeme, as a mute boy, from his mother. From that time forward, Jersualeme silently witnessed--and participated in--Caravaggio's life while preparing Caravaggio's paints, brushes, canvasses and set designs for his paintings.

The structure of this film is never linear, but rather, made up of flashbacks within flashbacks. However, one is never too confused, since the paintings (and their creation) are always at the film's core. John Russell Taylor said of this film: 'Visually, almost every individual shot in..is stunning, exquisitely composed in rich color and given plenty of time for us to appreciate its niceties.'

Art (and film) lovers will love this film, not only for its many-layered story, and how it is presented, but also for its acting, photography (Gabriel Beristain), design and paintings (Christopher Hobbs) and Costume Design (Sandy Powell). This is a film that should be seen over and over, with more layers of meaning and visual beauty to be revealed by each successive viewing.

Caravaggio

[jboothmillard · 9/10 · 24 June 2010]

It was only after the first ten minutes I realised it was a biography, and then another thirty minutes to notice the significant style of the film, and I was pleased I watched it. Basically, in the 16th Century in Italy, there was Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), and this is a fictionalised (for the latter amount) of hoe he created some of his greatest works. The film begins with Young Caravaggio (young Dexter Fletcher) creating his first works, including self-portrait styled Young Sick Bacchus, before moving to his adult days where he became a highly regarded Renaissance painter, including many erotic works of art. It sees his relationships with models Ranuccio Thomasoni (Sean Bean), who posed in his paintings of St. John, and Lena (Tilda Swinton), the three caught in a love triangle (experts aren't sure whether Caravaggio was gay or bisexual). Caravaggio also dabbles in prostitution, and uses these prostitutes, drunks and people on the street to create some of the most magnificent pieces, all oil paintings on canvas. All this goes on until the point where he is forced to murder Ranuccio with a knife in the neck, and he dies of severe illness in 1610, with his best friend Giustiniani (Nigel Davenport) by his side. Also starring Garry Cooper as Davide, Spencer Leigh as Jerusaleme, Robbie Coltrane as Scipione Borghese, Michael Gough as Cardinal Del Monte and Jonathan Hyde as Baglione. Firstly I'll start with mentioning the brilliant art pieces featured in the film, most being religion and mythology themed, they included: Medusa (I instantly recognised it), Amor Victorious (the naked angel) and Entombment (the final piece featured). Terry excels in the leading role of the artist, Bean and Swinton as the smitten couple who connect with him are really good, and there is a great supporting cast, but what I loved most about this biopic was that it didn't stick to the conventions of period like your supposed to. Even though it is meant to be the 16th Century, the film slips in some small background and foreground modern day things, i.e. deliberate anachronisms e.g. tuxedos, calculators, cars, Christmas lights, magazines, typewriters, motorbikes, swearing and much more besides, that manage to fit themselves in the scenes they feature. I believe this technique and style is called "Mise En Scène" (which I looked at a little in Film Studies), it is a (brush) stroke (LOL) of genius by accessible director Derek Jarman, and this absolutely deserves its place as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it is a brilliant non-conventional biographical drama. Very, very good!

I just don't get it!

[adamjohns-42575 · 1/10 · 12 August 2020]

The basic storyline has the potential to be interesting, but gets lost amongst an unachieved attempt to be artsy. The use of modern items, such as a motorbike, a typewriter and contemporary clothing does nothing to add to the alleged artistic aspect of the film and does not create the juxtaposition that it probably intendEd to. Considering their status of celebrity today, it's odd to see the awful performances of Tilda and Sean and even Dexter in this film. Overall I'm surprised that any of the actors ever got work again with the exception of Nigel Terry who, considering his terrible performance in Excalibur, gives us a pretty good Caravaggio. It's a shame that they didn't make the film in the traditional manner to show the story properly as he could have given us the passionate temperament of the artist very well and I might have learned something instead of getting so bored. The film jumps backwards and forwards from his death to his early days and it is only apparent after a few scenes as to what is actually happening. It is generally just all over the place. Nothing is very clear, relationships are hard to realise and the sexual tension never seems to be resolved. I think I know less about this artist now than I did before I wasted 89 minutes of my life watching this film, which I only did because it cost me so much on eBay. I was determined to at least get some of my money's worth. I might contact the seller and ask them to give me my money back as well as some compensation. Too surreal for my tastes.

Arguably Jarman's most conventional and accessible film

[dr_clarke_2 · 10/10 · 21 July 2020]

The late Derek Jarman directed a handful of films, but they aren't exactly to everybody's taste. His first full-length narrative feature had dialogue entirely in Latin, whilst his final one showed nothing at all on screen except the colour blue; Jarman was never a film-maker concerned with box office success. Thus, whilst his 1986 film Caravaggio is arguably his most conventional and accessible film, it can hardly be described as mainstream. Jarman was an artist as much as he was a director and Caravaggio - like all his films - shows him making art in a different medium rather than a narrative feature aimed at a wide audience. Jarman's sexually explicit biography of the eponymous sixteenth century artist Caravaggio is not even really a biography: the story opens with Caravaggio dying, then flashes back to his youth; most the film is concerned with a fictional period in his life in which he finds himself caught between two lovers, Ranuccio and Lena, the former of whom murders the latter, prompting Caravaggio to kill him in turn. Anyone wanting a serious study of the artist's life and work will be sorely disappointed. What we get instead is a quirky and visually beautiful film that not only reflects Jarman's artistic sensibilities, but also betrays his early career as a stage designer. The film looks sumptuous, with mise-en-scéne that captures the period feeling perfectly (including the copies of Caravaggio's paintings), except when it deliberately features anachronisms to reflect those in Caravaggio's own works. The actors often look realistically sweaty and filthy, and in a particularly nice touch, everyone's teeth are made to look either rotten or gold-capped. There's a level of attention to detail here that can't help but impress. It is of course all inspired by Caravaggio's artwork, the style of which Jarman successfully seeks to ape on the big screen. The cast is lead by experienced stage actor Nigel Terry as the older Caravaggio, with Sean Bean and Tilda Swinton in their first ever film roles as Rannucio and Lena, and all three give surprisingly naturalistic performances in a film that gives them very little dialogue to work with and requires a degree of theatricality at times. Terry spends entire scenes looking moody and thoughtful, whilst we hear his thoughts in a voice-over. Jarman, as he did in many of his films, convinced a wide assortment of seasoned thespians to add their talents to the film, including Vernon Dobtcheff, Nigel Davenport and Michael Gough, plus Robbie Coltrane as Scipione Borghese. They all give serious performances in a film that could have easily become camp rather than tragic, the exception being Jarman's frequent collaborator Jack Birkett as an amusingly eccentric, camp Pope. Simon Fisher-Turner's period-influence moody and atmospheric soundtrack compliments Jarman's visuals perfectly, and the end result is a film that is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, erotic and repellent, and utterly entrancing. If you only ever watch one Derek Jarman film, Caravaggio is probably the one to see: it's a great introduction to the work of a man who saw film as a visual medium in which great art could be achieved and didn't care if anyone thought it was blasphemous - much like Caravaggio himself.

It may show art, and artistically, but does that make it good cinema

[pt_spam_free · 3/10 · 21 November 2006]

One reviewer says of those who might not like this film that "it will only be appreciated by film goers who weary of film as diversion". This, I feel, is rather unfair to those of us who find it boring.

I have not become weary or disillusioned with film or with film makers, but found this tedious and self indulgent. But then, it's true, I'm not too big into deep meaningfulness. I feel that it may have great meaning for those in the know, you know.

It is very slow and it spends a long time in trying to make its individual points, using imagery, indeed, to do so. But in such days as these, it seems possible that a film like this might be the kind of thing that you'd come across in one of those dark and daunting booths in modern art galleries, rather than on the screen of a popular cinema setting.

A typically imaginative and highly idiosyncratic examination of the artist from director Derek Jarman

[ThreeSadTigers · 20 March 2008]

Quite simply unlike any other biographical film you will ever see, Derek Jarman's acclaimed production of Caravaggio (1986) is a lovingly constructed, highly personal cross-reference of tormented sixteenth century genius, twentieth century iconography and a somewhat satire on the shallowness of the burgeoning eighties' art scene of which Jarman was very much part of. Exploring Caravaggio's life through his work, the film distinctively merges fact, fiction, legend and imagination in a bold and confident approach that will probably leave serious art enthusiasts and casual viewers outraged by the complete disregard for accurate, historical storytelling.

Shot with a typically avant-garde approach, director/writer Jarman doesn't so much fashion a biography of the artist, but rather, creates a personal reflection of the man using intimate characteristics that appeal to his film-making sensibilities. This makes Caravaggio more of an interpretation of the filmmaker than the artist himself; somewhat self-indulgently focusing on Caravaggio's struggle with bisexuality, perfectionism and wanton obsession; perhaps even glossing over the more intricate workings of the character, for instance, his own passion for art and his battles with the various religious and creative constraints of the period.

It's a shame some of these ideas aren't further elaborated upon, because, at its heart, Caravaggio is really an exceptional film. As I commented earlier, it's perhaps unlike any other film you will ever see; an iconoclastic vision with a cinematic imagination that knows no bounds. Caravaggio is a film in which a 16th century setting gives way to the various anachronisms of passing trains, tuxedos, motorbikes, typewriters and chic nightclub settings. It is a film in which every frame is rendered in reference to the artist's work, composed with rich, shadowy colours that bring to mind the contrast between fresh and rotting fruit, and an unrivalled interplay between sound and production design that is reminiscent in its intense savagery of two dogs angrily ripping each other to pieces.

There is no other 'based on fact film' that has demonstrated such a wild and evocative recreation of real-life hysteria and events, with the possible exception of Peter Jackson's masterful Heavenly Creatures (1994) or even some of Jarman's subsequent projects like Edward II (1991) and Wittgenstein (1994). With a cast of now very well known faces, such as Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, Tilda Swinton, Michael Gough, Dexter Fletcher and Robbie Coltrane - not to mention some of the most beautiful photography ever committed to film - Caravaggio represents an impressive and enjoyable combination of art and cinema that is now, twenty years on, ripe for rediscovery.