Caravaggio
Derek Jarman, GB 1986; Screenplay: Derek Jarman based on an idea by Nicholas Ward-Jackson; Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain; Editing: George Akers; Music: Simon Fisher Turner; Cast: Dexter Fletcher, Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, Garry Cooper, Tilda Swinton, Nigel Davenport, Robbie Coltrane. 35mm, color, 93 min. English with German subtitlesThis stripped-down but baroquely beautiful biopic of the seminal Renaissance painter is the most accessible entry point into Jarman's sprawling corpus – and has a place in cinema history for providing Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean with their big‑screen debuts. Jarman was producer Andrew Ward Jackson's second choice for the project, the first having been a certain Pier Paolo Pasolini; the specter of violent death (both Pasolini and Caravaggio suffered bloody demises) haunts this imaginative evocation of 17th‑century Rome, presented – largely due to budgetary constraints – as a series of shadowy interiors in and around the artist's atelier. Inspired mainly by the existing works, Jarman invents a torrid love triangle involving Caravaggio (Nigel Terry), his model/muse (Bean), and their shared paramour (Swinton). The filmmaker regarded Caravaggio as "the most homosexual of painters," and especially revered his use of chiaroscuro techniques for, as he put it, "inventing cinematic light." (N.Y.)