L'ombra di Caravaggio

The movie is the story of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio who was an Italian painter in the 16th century, through the eyes of the Pope's investigator. He was known for painting "what he saw", some kind of reality that he wanted close to the divine, which was of course not ok with the Catholic Church. Within his paintings, you could see famous prostitutes, hoboes, represented as saints, such as Mary or St Peter. His life has multiple legends around it, he was known to have sexual relationships with both males and females, while painting for the Church, and his competitors tried to destroy him for that. He had to flee Rome after killing (accidentally?) someone and lived in Naples, Sicily, Malta, etc. The story of the movie is a bit long, but this is not why you should see this movie. The whole movie is staged as a painting, with that kind of atmosphere that you get from 16th century Italian paintings. Would I watch it again? No, but I am happy I watched it.

A lot is not known about Caravaggio's life, but a lot is. It is understandable and legitimate that a film like this fills in the unknown gaps. The fact that it twists, falsifies and rewrites the known things is unworthy of a biography.

I am anything but a friend of the Catholic Church and even less of the church leaders. But the way he was portrayed here in a one-sided way as a victim of the church, whose representatives were Caravaggio's most zealous supporters, is infamous. "The Death of Mary" has nothing to do with being rejected by a pope; the monks who commissioned it did that themselves. Because Caravaggio did not paint in accordance with the commission. And the painting was not saved by Rubens, who is said to have bought it in Rome according to the film, but by Ferdinando Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, the year after it was completed. Or the questioning of Artemisia Gentileschi. Caravaggio probably didn't even know her, even if her father did.

And these inaccuracies, distortions and falsifications run through the entire film, which has only one goal: to save the artist's honor. But he doesn't need to be saved. His art speaks for itself, as does his raw, unbridled character, which borders on brutality. Presenting the church as his murderer is an affront to all the church's real victims.

So an honorable attempt becomes a historically useless piece of work that doesn't bring you any closer to the artist's work. His apotheotic classification as a three-eyed man among the blind is tiring early on in the film.

Caravaggio's Shadow is a fever dream of a film, vividly photographed and convincingly played by an (unsurprisingly) handsome Italian cast.

There's plenty of melodrama, but it's an Italian period piece; anything less would have felt restrained.

At the heart of it is an irresolvable contradiction: the Vatican and papacy are the immensely rich and powerful core of Catholicism, but Catholicism is anchored by the teachings of Jesus, friend of the poor, the outcast and the desperate. What happens when the Vatican's most talented painter - a devout genius - uses the poor, the disgraced, and the outcasts of society as his subjects in seeking the truth of scripture?

Expect plenty of debauchery, plenty of on-location renaissance architecture, some intrigue, and even some swashbuckling swordfighting.

Worth your time.

Carravaggio

For fully appreciate this movie, it help to be a fan of the work of the painter ...as one understand more what was the motivation behind his choices , and why his works were so controversial yet so good...the Catholic Church at the time was the Church, the only one yet the rise of what would become the Protestant churches were making the Vatican nervous.

The conflict between the reality of life of the average people and the grandiose representation of the saints ...had no much income ...

Knowledge of some of the work of Caravaggio help understanding lots of scenes in this movie ...and what makes his work so good is what was no conceivable at the time...that you could use the face of common daily people to personified a saint , an angel ..which of my God of the time had no gender, no sex...

I have watched the movie at the cinema, in Timisoara. The movie looks to carefully illustrate the life of the painter. The actors and the actresses are very nice interpretating their roles. The scenes, the costumes, the colours and the decorations are very loyal to the XVII secol, when Caravaggio lived. The main actor, playing as Caravaggio, is a great actor, full of passion.

It is interesting, and still present on our days) the conflict in understanding what is the good and what is bad, because the bad can be find in good and viceversa. And of course, this is an unique truth for each of us.

Even the movie is 2 hours long, I have not figured out when the time passed.

Congratulations to all actors and for the entire team of the movie!