I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

A Disappointing Continuation

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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.

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

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.

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.