Caravaggio
Tags: murder, flashback

Plot synopsis:
Told in a segmented fashion, the film opens as Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) dies from lead poisoning while in exile, with only his long-time deaf-dumb companion Jerusaleme (Spencer Leigh) (who was given by his family to the artist as a boy) by his side. Caravaggio thinks back to his life as a teenage street ruffian (Dexter Fletcher) who hustles and paints. While taken ill and in the care of priests, young Caravaggio catches the eye of Cardinal Del Monte (Michael Gough). Del Monte nurtures Caravaggio's artistic and intellectual development but also appears to molest him.
As an adult, Caravaggio still lives under the roof and paints with the funding of Del Monte. Caravaggio is shown employing street people, drunks and prostitutes as models for his intense, usually religious paintings (see the article on the painter for examples). He is depicted as frequently brawling, gambling, getting drunk and is implied to sleep with both male and female models. In the art world, Caravaggio is regarded as vulgar and entitled due to his Vatican connections.
One day, Ranuccio (Sean Bean), a street fighter for pay, catches Caravaggio's eye as a subject and potential lover. Ranuccio also introduces Caravaggio to his girlfriend Lena (Tilda Swinton), who also becomes an object of attraction and a model to the artist. When both Ranuccio and Lena are separately caught kissing Caravaggio, each displays jealousy over the artist's attentions. One day, Lena announces she is pregnant (although she does not state who the father is) and will become a mistress to the wealthy Scipione Borghese (Robbie Coltrane). Soon, she is found murdered by drowning. As the weeping Ranuccio looks on, Caravaggio and Jerusaleme clean Lena's body. Caravaggio is shown painting Lena after she dies and mournfully writhing with her nude body. Ranuccio is arrested for Lena's murder, although he claims to be innocent. Caravaggio pulls strings and goes to the Pope himself to free Ranuccio. When Ranuccio is freed, he tells Caravaggio he killed Lena so they could be together. In response, Caravaggio cuts Ranuccio's throat, killing him. Back on his deathbed, Caravaggio is shown having visions of himself as a boy and trying to refuse the last rites offered him by the priests.
In keeping with Caravaggio's use of contemporary dress for his Biblical figures, Jarman intentionally includes several anachronisms in the film that do not fit with Caravaggio's life in the 16th century. In one scene, Caravaggio is in a bar lit with electric lights. Another character is seen using an electronic calculator. Car horns are heard honking outside of Caravaggio's studio and in one scene Caravaggio is seen leaning on a green truck. Cigarette smoking, a motorbike, and the use of a manual typewriter also feature in the film.

Review: 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.
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 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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You may be very distracted by the presence of jokey 20th century anachronisms in this otherwise grave movie about the artistic genius, Caravaggio.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
Instead it's a movie that uses some themes, and some paintings, of Caravaggio and builds a completely invented (to my knowledge) story line.
It has no overt sex (though there is lots of kissing all around) and it does includes some female actors (including a fabulous Tilda Swinton), but there are lots of "pretty boy" scenes and a sensibility that is just frankly different than the usual film world mainstream.That's a great thing.
Michelangelo Caravaggio was an important Italian painter who led a short, tumultuous life.
He surrounded himself with earthy street people who became the models for his paintings.If you're looking for a biopic about the life of Caravaggio, look elsewhere.
This chaotic and bizarre interpretation of his life by avant-garde director Derek Jarman is like seeing art history on a bad acid trip.
I learned nothing of the man and more about the director.Tilda Swinton made a memorable screen debut in the puzzling role of a young street woman and a very young Sean Bean is interesting as her companion, but Nigel Terry was a confusing and off-putting Caravaggio.
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.
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.
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 original intention of this film was to make a conventional biopic of Caravaggio in Italy.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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..
The images were weirdly interesting but I was looking more for a biographical and/or critical accounting of Caravaggio's life and works, not an LSD type drug trip.
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.
The celebrated actor Nigel Terry plays Caravaggio, and the equally celebrated Sean Bean is his lover Ranuccio.
That scene alone makes the film worth seeing.I saw the movie on DVD, where it worked well enough.
It's worth seeing if you love Caravaggio's art, as I do.
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.
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.
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..
It's been long since Caravaggio along with Wittgenstein created a new level in my personal movie picture register.
And another question appears: can you be sure in Caravaggio - in Jarman's case, of any intention to make a good movie?As much as I can put aside artistic inclinations in all Jarman movies - i cannot forget the fact that regardless the time they were made, all look, talk, feel and smell the same.
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..
This film tells the life story of the 17th-century painter, Caravaggio, from his adolescence to his death.I find "Caravaggio" not very easy to follow, because characters are not introduced by name; and it also does not help when Caravaggio is played by three different actors!
Though I did not particularly enjoyed "Caravaggio", I will give Derek Jarman's films another go though..
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.
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.
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.
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.
But it may also mean that luckily progress will bring some new way of looking at life and love.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU.
Derek Jarman does an amazing visual transformation with Lena (Tilda Swinton) that really stunned me, it's one of the most beautiful portrays on movies.