Caravaggio (film)

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Movie
German title Caravaggio
Original title Caravaggio
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1986
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Derek Jarman
script Derek Jarman,
Nicholas Ward Jackson
production Nicholas Ward-Jackson,
Colin MacCabe ,
Sarah Radclyffe
music Simon Fisher Turner
camera Gabriel Beristain
cut George Akers
occupation

Caravaggio is a biography by director Derek Jarman about the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio . The drama was shot in 1986 in abandoned warehouses along the Thames in London on a budget of $ 715,000 from the British Film Institute .

Just as Caravaggio himself occasionally painted biblical figures in 17th century clothing, Jarman incorporates 20th century details into his historical film, including a bar that is illuminated with electric light. Mechanical typewriters, railway noises, a moped, cigarettes, a truck and an electronic calculator also appear.

The plot is a nifty construct of well-established events, biographical facts, conjecture, legends and pure fiction. Jarman combines these elements into an atmospherically dense and plausible story without claim to historical truth.

action

The impoverished painter Caravaggio (actor Nigel Terry ) lies on his deathbed in Porto Ercole in 1610 . His mind wanders back to his short life of passion, his childhood on the street, the patronage of Cardinal del Monte , his relationship with Ranuccio (Sean Bean), who was the model for many of his depictions of martyrs . Multiple flashbacks to different episodes from the painter's life are used.

After completing his training as a painter, Michelangelo Merisi, born in Caravaggio , Province of Bergamo in 1571 , moved to Rome . He takes his stage name Caravaggio after the place of origin of his parents. Unsuccessful and sick, he lies in a hospital. Here Cardinal Del Monte ( Michael Gough ) discovers the talent of the artist who portrayed himself as Bacchus . Del Monte takes the young painter into his care, and he soon receives important public commissions.

However, his handling and the unusually realistic depictions make him the target of numerous attacks from which the power of the wealthy banker Giustiniani ( Nigel Davenport ) protects him.

Caravaggio chooses street people, drunkards, poor people, thieves and prostitutes as models for his intensive, predominantly religious works . The painter made the acquaintance of the player Ranuccio and his lover, the prostitute Lena ( Tilda Swinton ), in an inn. He gets involved in an explosive three-way relationship and engages the two as models. Lena gets to know the influential Cardinal Borghese ( Robbie Coltrane ) and gets involved with him, just as Caravaggio portrays her as Maria Magdalena . This sets in motion a spiral of violence. When Lena becomes pregnant, it is not clear who the father actually is. She leaves her two lovers to go to Borghese on the grounds that Ranuccio and Caravaggio have each other.

When she is later found dead, drowned in the Tiber , Ranuccio is arrested and charged with murder, although the latter protests that he is innocent. Caravaggio, believing in his innocence, spreads rumors that Borghese, the Pope's nephew, committed the murder. He manages to get an audience with the Pope and to hand over a petition . He is insulted by him regarding his homosexuality and his way of life and because of the intolerable Tomassoni affair. He is told, however, that if the Pope's next picture is recognized, Ranuccio would be released from custody.

As if obsessed, Caravaggio paints the dead Lena laid out in his studio and completes the painting under the title The Death of Mary . No sooner has Ranuccio, who is again at liberty, entered the room than he is amused that they “had them properly screwed”. When the confused friend asks him what he meant, his model asks if he was blind, of course he was the one who killed Lena. He did it out of love for Caravaggio, for both of them. In affections Caravaggio slashes then Ranuccio to the throat.

A four-year escape begins for the artist, always accompanied by the faithful servant Jerusaleme, whom he bought as a child for his services as a painter's assistant and who remains with him until Caravaggio's death.

Awards

literature

  • Stephen Farthing / Ed Webb-Ingall (Eds.): Derek Jarman. Sketchbooks . German art publisher 2013

criticism

Web links