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 cocktail 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.
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 cocktail 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.