Caravaggio DVD, 1986

Seven years in the planning, Derek Jarman's typically wayward biopic of the Italian late Renaissance chiaroscuro master Michelangelo da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was shot on a tiny budget, but such is the extraordinary visual charge generated by practically every image that one barely notices. Cunningly forestalling nit-picks about period accuracy by introducing deliberate anachronisms (a calculator here, a typewriter there), Jarman is more interested in creating an impressionistic fresco of the impassioned, often violent life of a man who was as deft with a knife as he was with a paintbrush. And while Jarman himself was a much gentler man, it's impossible to miss the parallels that he draws between his subject's life and the filmmaker's own career as an artistic and sexual outsider. Naturally, Caravaggio's bisexuality is explored in graphic detail, but so too is the painter's complex relationship with the Catholic Church: the thieves and prostitutes he consorted with ended up as models for the most sublime religious iconography. The film is at its most enthralling when it shows Caravaggio's canvases being brought painstakingly to fruition: as a depiction of the agony and ecstasy of artistic creation it leaves Charlton Heston's Michelangelo standing. An unexpectedly starry cast by Jarman standards includes Nigel Terry as Caravaggio (with Dexter Fletcher as his younger self), Tilda Swinton as his muse Lena, and Michael Gough and Robbie Coltrane as corrupt cardinals. But a young, then unknown Sean Bean almost steals the film as Lena's and later Caravaggio's lover Ranuccio, the bare-chested bare-knuckle boxer turned assassin in 'The Martyrdom of St Matthew'.
Since the film was produced by the BFI, its DVD label has no excuse for not offering a pristine anamorphic transfer and throwing in a ton of extras. Happily, it delivers on all fronts: a technical but fascinating commentary by cinematographer Gabriel Beristain is accompanied by video interviews with Terry, Swinton and designer Christopher Hobbs, as well as two archive interviews with Jarman himself (one video, one audio). Multiple galleries include everything from Jarman's own production diary to designs and storyboards and stills from the final film.

Michael Brooke on 18th December 2006
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