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.

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...

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