Those expecting a standard biography of the renowned Italian painter need to look elsewhere for this is anything but a standard biography. Those familiar with British filmmaker Derek Jarman’s other movies will not be surprised by what they find here but others certainly will (as various reviews attest). The painter Caravaggio becomes a metamphor for artists in general and what they have to deal with in order to produce their art. It specifically references the London art scene of the 1980s which Jarman was actively involved with. The deliberate anachronisms of cigarettes, calculators, and typewriters are there to reinforce this.
The main reason the film works for me is Jarman’s use of light, shadow, and color along with the recreation of the stagings of the subjects of Caravaggio’s paintings (He began his career as a painter before becoming a set designer -Ken Russell’s THE DEVILS- and film director). The remarkable visuals, the quality performances of Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, Tilda Swinton (in her film debut) and the intruiging screenplay by the director kept me continually engrossed in the proceedings. I highly recommend that you run the film with subtitles so that you don’t miss a word of Nigel Terry / Carvaggio’s voiceovers. They enrich and help you to understand the nature of the subject and of the film itself.
In addition to the reasons listed above, I applaud CARAVAGGIO for its strong supporting cast (Michael Gough, Robbie Coltrane, Nigel Davenport), fluid camerawork, and creative use of a limited budget (the film was financed mostly by Britain’s Channel Four) which works to Jarman’s advantage as it gives him tighter creative control over what he wants to show and how he can show it. This is closer to a filmed play (that borrows heavily from Bertolt Brecht) than an actual movie although it is very cinematic. Jarman’s use of homoerotic imagery is less pronounced here than in many of his other works but that will still bother some people. Fortunately a lot less than it did 25 years ago.
For me CARAVAGGIO was not a complete success but I still rate it 5 stars for accomplishing everything it did on such limited resources. Because it deliberately refuses to be your average film biography, it has managed to stay with me a lot longer than many more accomplished films of that nature. Whether I completely like it or don’t like it should have nothing to do with its overall rating. In my opinion it’s what you do with what you’ve got that counts for everything and Derek Jarman’s films in general and CARAVAGGIO in particular have managed to achieve quite a lot.
The Capsule Critic 