Caravaggio

Name: Caravaggio
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Released: August 7, 2002
Duration: 93 min
Rating: 55
Cast: Dexter Fletcher, Noam Almaz

2002

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Mixed or average reviews based on 5 Critics

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Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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7.3	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 4 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Cinevista | Release Date: August 7, 2002

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)

Director: Derek Jarman

Genre(s): Biography, Drama, History

Runtime: 93 min

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Awards & Rankings

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Critic Reviews

Variety - Staff (Not credited)

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. Read full review

Christian Science Monitor - David Sterritt

It's often beautiful to watch, although it's more interested in visual style than philosophical depth. Read full review

TV Guide Magazine - Staff (Not credited)

Marrying a painterly aesthetic with a defiantly homosexual sensibility, this ironic biopic is probably the most accessible film of avant-garde British director Derek Jarman. Read full review

Chicago Reader - Pat Graham

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. Read full review

Washington Post - Paul Attanasio

Less a movie than an act of vandalism. Read full review

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User Reviews

FrederickD.

Jun 24, 2006

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, 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

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lasttimeisaw

Feb 17, 2012

To celebrate my first encounter with Jermanâ

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