Caravaggio's shadow? Not even a shadow of Caravaggio

CAPOLAVORO. There is only this one word, definitive and indelible, to define the new film dedicated to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio by the genius of Michele Placido. Everything is perfect: the tattered and trivial Rome of the very early seventeenth century, the profusion of insults, half-toothed blasphemies, blood, asses, posthumous phalluses and screams of the scandalized and purest inquisitors, upstanding servants of Holy Mother Church who martially obey dissolute and lascivious cardinals, art lovers at best (like the bumbling Scipione Borghese), sodomites at worst (the satirical Francesco Maria del Monte). Scamarcio then is Caravaggio redivivivus: passionate and impassioned, he denies no one the pleasantness of his body, be they men, women or children. And, in his transits in the papal prisons, he meets, amazes and conquers a very human Giordano Bruno, who puts his spirit into his hands almost as in those of a priest: but perhaps Scamarcio/Caravaggio is almost more, than a priest. He God feels him, loves him, quotes him, in reciting from memory passages from the Gospels at every crossroads, with the jovial Filippo Neri, embodied in a figure somewhere between Fra Tuck and Fantozzi. And yes, proximity to Oratorian circles would have been a fine way to explain so many choices and so many changes in the sobering Rome at the beginning of that terrible century that was the seventeenth century. And instead, the ideal and artistic subversion is here improperly entrusted to the skit devoted to the sensual homoerotic kiss practiced by Merisi in church, after he has babbled random verses in front of his own Neapolitan canvas of Christ at the Column, perched on the altar and almost in mystical swoon.

The children, as well as the adults, all do OH great together as the trick unravels: Caravaggio paints whores live! Mamma mia, but then it is true what is whispered in the quadrivi and angiporti! Even the tableaux vivant of the Death of the Virgin had turned out prettier on Italia’s Got Talent, not to mention Peter’s Crucifixion, where the crazy Pierone the Beggar is hoisted by a playful Honorius Longhi in a very un “plastic” manner. But then, really? But even the Marchesa Costanza Sforza Colonna had to own this bisexual stud? But why? FOR WHAT ON EARTH REASON? Perhaps the same reason that prompted Placido to hideAmor Vincitore in the dark subscale of the Galleria Giustiniani, in defiance of inventories, Guides, and documents that tell how the painting was “veiled” by a fine curtain and certainly not “hidden” by a rag in the subscale because a naked pea could be seen (it is then unclear by virtue of what privilege Giovanni Baglione could enter the rooms of Prince Giustiniani, he absent, but whatever ... details).

Worthy of Monty Python (no offense intended) is the comic trio Francesco Maria Del Monte-Scipione Borghese-random cleric who sneer at the swear words uttered on the sacred site by Merisi at Baglione’s address (but wasn’t Zuccari, then Prince of the Academy of San Luca, supposed to be there?), then mark themselves immediately afterwards like schoolboys in school by nuns looking at dirty covers from the kiosk in front of the church. Pathetic.

I don’t even have to say (it was already sniffed out from the enthusiastic preemptive reviews) that the leitmotif is “Caravaggio paints whores instead of the Madonna” and the church doesn’t want to, just doesn’t, because then people’s brains go haywire. Phrase that is repeated (did I mention that he paints whores?) thirty or forty times. Obviously Michael does this because he has a soul that merges with the earth and with pain, he is a kind of Angel of the Lord (as in fact - but do you see Placido that we understand each other? - he calls him his favorite prostitute, whom he impersonates from Magdalene Pamphilij to Mary pierced). Let us say that if he had returned there, in Rome, Caravaggio would have been a new Peter and on that stone we would have founded a new church. It is of little use that we know perfectly well why the Madonna del Serpe was not on his altar for long, that the good Carlo Saraceni (called to replace Merisi’s Death of the Virgin at La Scala) was given a similar first refusal, that between 1600 and 1605 Caravaggio was a real star (certainly profligate, like many stars, but no more than others) with commissions such as that of Tiberio Cerasi, the Vittrice (by the way...all mentioning sta Vallicella as a refugium peccatorum where escapees recited the Gospel by heart, but why not say so, that in 1603 Caravaggio painted the sensational Vatican Deposition there?), the Maxims, the wealthy banker Costa, as well as the usual Del Monte and Giustiniani.

Caravaggio, as usual, remains in the background. His world, remains in the background. Art and its communicative role in a complicated century, remain in the background. In fact Merisi and the paintings are a devil of a pretext, a historical-narrative contrivance to tell a truculent tale of swashbuckling, sex and violence, nothing more and nothing less. A mere name-catcher on which to build an unpretentious, idea-less film (or rather, with ideas now so hackneyed that they can be summarized in a few milliseconds on the Internet) that is no longer even fiction.

It is just boredom and abuse. I mean, for heaven’s sake, you want to make it er little film in Romanesco about Caravaggio? You have done it, but don’t pass it off as a masterpiece! Of Placido’s banal and truly ridiculous film, the narrative device of the icy inquisitor sent by the Pope to shed light on the option of pardoning the painter is saved. Oh God, it is saved if you have pity for your brain and leave the theater about ten minutes before he declares Merisi a kind of Galileo Galilei of painting, asks him for an abjuration to painting plebeians in lieu of saints and madonnas (only he did it eh! The others all portraying the real Madonna) which the Zorro of the brush naturally refuses with disdain and, finally, stun him with a sledgehammer to the cerebellum only to have his throat slit by the Tomassoni bravacci, whom he had unwrapped beforehand by sniffing Caravaggio’s blamelessness. If, on the other hand, like me, you sinned a lot and were glued to the screen until the end, you had better recite at least 10 Hail Marys and 5 Pater Nosters before you go to sleep, because I’m sure the blasphemy escaped you.

Poetry, but what am I saying, CINEMA! Such as we have not seen in a long time. And such as I hope NEVER to see again. In fact, of Caravaggio here you cannot even see the Shadow.

*I deliberately leave out the “errors” of dates (the Medusa who was in Florence-documented in the house of Medici-from 1598 etc.), ownership, commissions and let’s say art historical data, because I believe that a film/fiction does not have the duty to respect them all to the millimeter. Of not betraying the subject, however, that is. Surreal, in fact, that in an interview Michele Placido/Cardinal del Monte asserts “The only thing we’re not sure of is how Caravaggio died.” But I say, but the good taste to say “something we’ve cobbled together for the needs of the scene” no? Come on, Miché. GOOD TASTE! Oh no, yeah. If you make such a film to sell tickets with the gimmick of Caravaggio’s name evidently good taste is not covered.

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.