REVIEW: CARAVAGGIO
Edwin Jahiel
A film review by Edwin Jahiel
Copyright 1995 Edwin Jahiel
(UK 1986)
*** 1/2
Written and directed by Derek Jarman.
Producer, Sarah Radclyffe.
Executive producer, Colin McCabe.
Camera, Gabriel Beristain.
Editing, George Akers.
Production design, Christopher Hobbs.
Music, Simon Fisher Turner.
Cast: Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, Garry Cooper, Spencer Leigh, Tilde Swinton,
Michael Gough, Nigel Davenport, Robbie Coltrane, Jonathan Hyde,
Dexter Fletcher, Noam Almaz, Jack Birkett.
A British Film Institute, Channel 4, Nicholas Ward-Jackson production.
Released by the B.F.I.
No rating.
Painter-cineaste Derek Jarman, one of the "enfants terribles" of
the contemporary British scene, has come up with an avant-garde
"biography" of the great Italian painter Caravaggio (1573-1610) which
is imaginary yet factual, artful yet campy, arty yet artsy, original
but self-indulgent, and fascinating for specialized audiences.
Kudos to the New Art Theatre for living up to its name with this
most chance-taking item. Not that CARAVAGGIO is alienatingly
esoteric: in London it has drawn large audiences; at the Berlin Film
Festival it won the Silver Bear, the second highest prize. But it is
neither your nice Hollywood biopic of an artist nor a feature-length
documentary, so that, in its bewildering (to some) "otherness," the
outrageous CARAVAGGIO is bound to polarize audiences.
At the very least I'd say that this is a must for art-lovers and
students, for people interested in off-beat film and theatre and
visuals. Shot on a limited budget in a warehouse by the Thames,
CARAVAGGIO roams around at will, flashing back from the dying painter
to his youth, and re-zig-zagging forward to the painter's death.
It is done in broken bits, against all traditional notions of
continuity. As it goes along, it invents, at times gratuitously, at
times on the fragile basis of history (or legend)--and it is always
perversely, often delightfully, anachronistic. Stylized places and
years move in and out, merge, fuse, separate. There are" nows"--the
20th century, vague, almost atemporal; 16th century "thens"; twilight,
"no time" zones; periods when the incursions of modernity in the past
vary in intensity: a corrupt Roman tinkering with a musical calculator
as he talks to a Cardinal, a Caravaggio patron; a typewriter, a
motorcycle, modern dress. The anachronisms are not visually
intrusive. They are reinforced by sounds of accordions, jazz bands,
jets, radio or TV, which, however, are not shown.
The story may be confusing, but the art visuals are not, and
they're quite extraordinary. Caravaggio used models for paintings and
Jarman goes to the paintings to reproduce the models, as living still
lifes, in minute reconstructions.
The painter's models were people of the lower classes. The
revolutionary, naturalistic, forceful, controversial Caravaggio--an out
and out tradition-breaking avant-gardist--used whores for Madonnas (as
in "The Death of the Virgin," scandal-making, because of its different
emphasis of figures), cutthroats for saints, novel angles and
perspectives: in "The Conversion of St. Paul" a huge horse
dominates.
Jarman repeats Caravaggio's magnificent use of sometimes brutal
light in what is the best demonstration of chiaroscuro, a Caravaggio
innovation and, to this day, a lesson about the immense possibilities
of one-source lighting.
Says Jarman: "Caravaggio invented dramatic lighting ... similar to
the kind of light used in the cinema. In a way he invented cinematic
light.... Every Italian cameraman is grounded in Caravaggio...."
What was shock for Caravaggio's contemporaries is a different
shock, that of recognition, for us, as familiar paintings follow one
another, "coming to you live" as well as on on canvas. It is unique,
superbly lit and photographed, and inventive with props which can be
costumes, carefully arranged fruit or painstakingly folded blankets and
rags.
As Caravaggio paints, the canvases-in-progress are so convincingly
done that, so far as I know, they're the very best I have ever seen in
a film. (I have no documentation on the movie and I cannot identify the
person who did those paintings).
Jarman's whimsy goes beyond Caravaggio and into paintings by those
of a like artistic bent or those that Caravaggio influenced directly or
indirectly. Jarman's actors and objects are in groupings, poses,
situations which do not copy other works of art, but are inspired by
them, mostly by the use of light: references, serious variants,
tongue-in-cheek homages.
Among them Le Nain, La Tour, Zurbaran and Velasquez... Sometimes
the trick jumps at you: an amusingly modified David, "The Death of
Danton" in his "sabot" (portable bathtub). Sometimes the compositions
are throwaway, lightning-fast. Between blinks you just might recognize
some of them, a Donatello sculpture for instance.
The film's Caravaggio is bisexual, with the stress on
homoeroticism. His major non-art passion, Ranuccio, is his equally
bisexual model, a beautiful low-life hunk that becomes the painter's
blood brother after a fight in a dive, and whom Caravaggio kills at the
end.
Film connoisseurs might notice that CARAVAGGIO does double duty
with its unstated but clear references to the late Italian film
director Pier Paolo Pasolini. He too came up from the slums. He was a
revolutionary artist, a Marxist, a homosexual who was killed by one of
his young pickups. CARAVAGGIO is even built more or less along
Pasoliniesque lines of disdain and provocation. It also shows the
influence of Jean-Luc Godard, especially the 1982 film PASSION.
This is a wild film where the actors, pronouncedly British, mostly
play Cockneys who play Italians. Where a voice-off narration ranges
from poetic simplicity ("The stars are the diamonds of the poor") to
platitudes, disquisitions (e.g., on Giordano Bruno) and purple prose.
Where the painting of "Profane Love" is accompanied by lyrical flamenco
singing. Where gold coins are stored in mouths, transmitted by kisses
and placed, Mafia-style, on the eyes of Caravaggio's black-suited
corpse, lying in state like a Sicilian Don.
You cannot judge CARAVAGGIO by habitual standards. It has
wretched excesses, "longueurs," claustrophobia, calculated distancing.
But it is also an original experiment, a one-of-a-kind tribute to a
ground-breaking master, and a feast of color, light and shadows.
At the New Art Theatre.
Written March 7 1988
--
Edwin Jahiel