Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood

Caravaggio is really a great artist. There would be no needs to create fancy storyline, invented voiceovers, forced dramatic images. The documentary is there. The artist is there. Why do we need all this mess? Worst direction ever. Caravaggio, version Jersey Shore.

"Caravaggio: The Soul & The Blood is the latest film about one of the greatest painters who ever lived. In his short and often violent life, Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio, or Caravaggio as he was commonly known, produced some of the most powerful religious images ever put on canvas. To be brutally honest, this film was a major disappointment. For a start, the photography in no way did Caravaggio's paintings justice; the film, after all, is about his art and life, not about the outside of churches, as beautiful as many of the churches no doubt are. The musical score is overwhelmingly loud, and pompous. Why the views and opinions of 'Caravaggio experts' were not sub-titled, is beyond me; having the dialogue in Italian, then to be overdubbed in English, makes for confusion. To cap it all, we are treated to an actor trying to portray (I assume), what a tormented soul Caravaggio was, by wrapping his face in cellophane, submerging himself in water, or smearing himself with tar. If that was the director's intention, then it didn't work: in fact, it was totally unnecessary. Having said that, the film is worth a look, if only to see Caravaggio's paintings up there on the big screen.

Actually I couldn't watch this movie full length as it is so pretentious, it wants to be artistic, but it is only confusing and boring. It is rated "bambini accompagnati" - children with adult presence but actually already the first sequence is not for children at all as it shows a suicide. Anyway I think children would not understand and enjoy this movie.

I watched this movie/documentary at the cinema and I didn't like it much. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I found it uncomplete, too slow and not balanced. The idea to mix a modern part with an historical/artistic one was not good in my opinion: the actor alone in the room had nothing in common with Caravaggio and it seemed to me a bit unrelated to the rest of the movie. I read the entire biography of the painter and I discovered many more things about his life and his works. The documentary doesn't really say anything new and the images are stressfully repeated. Not a real documentary, not a biography and not a movie, it is an experiment not successful at all.

The analysis of Carravagios work is presented in comments of a price over and interviews with Italian art specialists. However we get so little to see of the paintings itself and then in short details or with a moving camera. The total showing of the work is always very short like 4 seconds. Then there are quotes of Carravagio himself, very interesting but as a voice over with actors who play scenes which are of a misplaced symbolic character.