Everything is divided in two concepts: rule and transgression. That it's not a bad thing but for most people it's difficult to accept them, to comprehend them and to make both things interesting. Most of the time we tend to only follow the rules and forget about transgression or even condemn it.

Caravaggio was a transgressionist in terms of art with his painting evoking religious themes using as models simple people, peasants, prostitutes, fishers, creating powerful masterpieces; and a transgressionist with his dangerous lifestyle, sleeping with men and women, getting involved in fights, in one of these fights he killed a man, reason why he ran away to other countries, and then dying at the age of 38. Then we have a filmmaker, an true artist named Derek Jarman who knows how to portray art on film, breaking conventions, trying to do something new and succeeding at it.

To name one of his most interesting films his last "Blue" was a blue screen with voice overs by actors and his own voice telling about his life, his struggle while dying of AIDS, and he manages to be poetic, real about his emotions, and throughout almost 2 hours of one simple blue screen he never makes us bored. Who could be a better director for a project about the life of Caravaggio than a transgressionist like Jarman himself?

The movie "Caravaggio" is wonderful because it combines many forms of art into one film, capturing the nuances of Caravaggio's colors and paintings translated into the film art. It has poetry, paintings, music of the period of the story, sometimes jazz music. All that in the middle of the story of one of the greatest artists of all time.

This is not a usual biopic telling about the artist's life and death in a chronological order, trying to do everything make sense. This is a very transgressional work very similar to "Marie Antoniette" by Sofia Coppola, so it might shock and disappoint those who seek for a conventional story truthful to its period. And just like Coppola's film "Caravaggio" takes an bold artistic license to create its moments. Jarman introduces to the narrative set in the 16th and 17th century, objects like a radio, a motorcycle, a calculator machine among others; sometimes this artistic license works (e.g. the scene where Jonathan Hyde playing a art critic types his review on his typewriter, a notion that we must have about how critics worked that time making a comparison with today's critics, but it would be strange see him writing with a feather, even though it would be a real portrayal).

The movie begins with Caravaggio (played by Nigel Terry) in his deathbed, delusioning and remembering facts of his passionate and impetuous life; his involvement with Lena (Tilda Swinton) and Ranuccio (Sean Bean); memories of childhood (played by Dexter Fletcher); and of course the way he worked with his paintings, admired by everybody in his time.

All of this might seem misguided, some things appear to don't have a meaning but they have. I was expecting a movie more difficult to follow but instead I saw a truly artistic film, not pretentious whatsoever, that knows how to bring Caravaggio's works into life, with an incredible and fascinating mise-èn-scene, in a bright red that jumps on the screen with beauty. Very impressive.

It's an unique and interesting experience. For those who enjoy more conventional and structured biopics try to watch this film without being too much judgemental, you'll learn great things about the Baroque period because it is a great lesson about the period. For those who like new film experimentations or want to watch a Jarman's film here's the invitation. 10/10

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a drunkard, a gambler and a brawler. He was sexually promiscuous and may have been bisexual. (His paintings often contain erotic depictions of male nudes but not of female ones). He killed a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni during a brawl, although it is uncertain whether this killing was deliberate murder or accidental manslaughter. He was also one of the greatest artists who ever lived and was noted for intensely emotional religious paintings which humanised Christ, his Apostles and other Biblical figures rather than idealising them. For all his tumultuous lifestyle, his biographers seem to agree that he was a sincere Christian believer and that these paintings reflect his own beliefs.

Derek Jarman has obviously studied Caravaggio's paintings in detail, and tries to give his film a visual look which in its striking contrasts of light and dark imitates Caravaggio's own artistic style. A feature of the film is Jarman's use of anachronisms- electric lighting, a motor-bike, the sound of a passing train- which he defended on the basis that Caravaggio's art was also anachronistic, dressing figures from the Bible or Classical antiquity in the fashions of sixteenth century Italy.

We do not, however, see much of those paintings themselves, at least not of the great religious works upon which the painter's reputation largely rests. We do see something of his paintings of pretty naked boys, doubtless because these fit in better with Jarman's agenda, which is more concerned with Caravaggio's complicated sex life than with his art. In this version the killing of Ranuccio occurs because he and Caravaggio are involved in a complicated bisexual love-triangle with a woman.

One reviewer tried to analyse this film in terms of "rules" and "transgression". Jarman clearly cast himself as one of life's transgressors, in revolt against both conventional bourgeois aesthetics and conventional bourgeois ethics, and saw Caravaggio as a kindred spirit. An analysis in these terms, however, is bound to be over-simplistic because it ignores one of the great paradoxes of art. Ever since the rise of Romanticism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries we have expected great artists to be free spirits, in revolt against both conventional bourgeois aesthetics and conventional bourgeois ethics. We have, moreover, anachronistically transferred our post-Romantic expectations onto pre-Romantic artists like Caravaggio.

A great artist, therefore, who rebels against the accepted rules of the society in which he lives is thereby, consciously or unconsciously, conforming to the conventional idea of the artist as rebel. A great artist who does not so rebel is seen as a transgressor against our idea of what an artist should be, and there will be plenty of critics queuing up to deny his greatness. (Attempts to dismiss, say, John Constable as a minor talent have less to do with the quality of his work than with a feeling that there was something not quite artistic about his solidly bourgeois lifestyle; his great rival Turner strikes us as much more satisfyingly bohemian). Or, as James Thurber summarised this paradox, "Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"

Moreover, the Caravaggio we see in this film is not really transgressing against the rules of Renaissance Italian society, at least not against the rules of Renaissance Italian society as interpreted by Derek Jarman. Caravaggio's aristocratic and ecclesiastical patrons all live a debauched lifestyle, not even bothering to hide their debauchery beneath a veneer of hypocrisy; if they don't have a mistress it is because they prefer boys to women. It Caravaggio and Ranuccio sleep around with partners of both sexes, therefore, they are not so much rebelling against social norms as following the example of their social betters.

The story is told in a disjointed fashion, in a series of flashbacks from Caravaggio's deathbed, and is not always easy to follow. The film's main strength is that it is visually attractive; its main weakness is that it tells us a lot about Caravaggio's sex life and little about his art. There have been many men who have had private lives at least as colourful as his, few indeed who have been gifted with his level of genius. His life would be a natural subject for a great film. This is not it. 4/10

It was only after the first ten minutes I realised it was a biography, and then another thirty minutes to notice the significant style of the film, and I was pleased I watched it. Basically, in the 16th Century in Italy, there was Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio (Nigel Terry),and this is a fictionalised (for the latter amount) of hoe he created some of his greatest works. The film begins with Young Caravaggio (young Dexter Fletcher) creating his first works, including self-portrait styled Young Sick Bacchus, before moving to his adult days where he became a highly regarded Renaissance painter, including many erotic works of art. It sees his relationships with models Ranuccio Thomasoni (Sean Bean),who posed in his paintings of St. John, and Lena (Tilda Swinton),the three caught in a love triangle (experts aren't sure whether Caravaggio was gay or bisexual). Caravaggio also dabbles in prostitution, and uses these prostitutes, drunks and people on the street to create some of the most magnificent pieces, all oil paintings on canvas. All this goes on until the point where he is forced to murder Ranuccio with a knife in the neck, and he dies of severe illness in 1610, with his best friend Giustiniani (Nigel Davenport) by his side. Also starring Garry Cooper as Davide, Spencer Leigh as Jerusaleme, Robbie Coltrane as Scipione Borghese, Michael Gough as Cardinal Del Monte and Jonathan Hyde as Baglione. Firstly I'll start with mentioning the brilliant art pieces featured in the film, most being religion and mythology themed, they included: Medusa (I instantly recognised it),Amor Victorious (the naked angel) and Entombment (the final piece featured). Terry excels in the leading role of the artist, Bean and Swinton as the smitten couple who connect with him are really good, and there is a great supporting cast, but what I loved most about this biopic was that it didn't stick to the conventions of period like your supposed to. Even though it is meant to be the 16th Century, the film slips in some small background and foreground modern day things, i.e. deliberate anachronisms e.g. tuxedos, calculators, cars, Christmas lights, magazines, typewriters, motorbikes, swearing and much more besides, that manage to fit themselves in the scenes they feature. I believe this technique and style is called "Mise En Scène" (which I looked at a little in Film Studies),it is a (brush) stroke (LOL) of genius by accessible director Derek Jarman, and this absolutely deserves its place as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it is a brilliant non-conventional biographical drama. Very, very good!