Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 264: Mon Oct 1

Caravaggio (Jarman, 1986): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm



This film, which is also being shown on October 4th and 5th, is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. You can find full details here.

Time Out review:
As Caravaggio (excellently played by Nigel Terry) lies dying at Porto Ercole in 1610, his mind drifts back over a short life of extraordinary passion: his relationship with his model, Ranuccio Thomasoni, who posed perhaps as the muscular assassin in so many 'martyrdom' pictures, and the other apex in the triangle, Lena, who is Ranuccio's mistress and Caravaggio's model for the Magdalene and the dead Virgin. Derek Jarman proposes a murderous intensity as the mainspring for both Caravaggio's love life and for his furious painting, and it certainly carries great weight of conviction. For all the melodrama of the story, however, he has elected a style of grave serenity, composed of looks and glances, long silences in shaded rooms, sudden eruptions of blood. It all works miraculously well, even the conscious use of anachronisms and the street sounds of contemporary Italy.
Chris Peachment

Here (and above) is the trailer.

No comments:

Post a Comment