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Caravaggio
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Metascore
55 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 5 Critics What's this?

User Score
7.3 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 4 Ratings

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10 out of 10
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  • Starring: Dexter Fletcher, Noam Almaz
  • Summary: Derek Jarman's 1986 film reveals the seventeenth-century painter's complex life?his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and flirtations with the underworld?while also delving into Jarman's major concerns: violence, history, homosexuality, and the relationship between film and painting. (Two Boots Pioneer Theater)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 5
  3. Negative: 1 out of 5
  1. Variety
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    80
    Much of the joy of the film is to be found in the way Jarman and his team recreate the look and color of the original paintings.
  2. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Pat Graham
    50
    In a sense, Caravaggio has less to do with its ostensible subject than with Jarman's own insistence on sensual, and largely homoerotic, expression, though there's a feeling of stifling enclosure to the images Jarman invents, of eros turned inward, toward private fantasy and longing, rather than outward to a world of real possibility.
  3. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Paul Attanasio
    10
    Less a movie than an act of vandalism.

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User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 3
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 3
  3. Negative: 0 out of 3
  1. FrederickD.
    9
    Critics vilified this film. They were wrong. They are so besotted with western linear film plot, they fail to recognize the brilliance of this non-linear portrait of a tormented, but seminal Italian artist as a young man. The film captures his twisted genius, his brutalilty, his passion, his bisexuality, and his transendent vision, which elevated the common poor street beggar to the level of saint and angel. The film captures Caravaggio's genius and psychopathology in equal measure. Though the film takes liberties with time and place, it can hardly being said to be twisting the truth, since so little is known for certain about Caravaggio's life. (See Francine Prose's excellent portrait of Caravaggio in her recet biography -Atlas/HarperCollins books). Jarman imagines well the nightmarish vision of beauty, truth, love, passion and death that drove Caravvaggio's life on the street and on the canvas. The film is similar in approach to Peter Watkins' docudrama about the painter, Edvard Munch, which was also vilified by critics. More recently it was vindicated: the Harvard Film Archive now says the Munch film is "...considered by many to be the most successful portrayal of the artistic process ever depicted on film." I predict a similar future view will emerge of Derek Jarman's film on Caravaggio..… Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes
  2. lasttimeisaw
    8
    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 **** 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.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

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