Starring: Riccardo Scarmacio, Louis Garrel, Isabelle Huppert, Micaela Ramazzotti, Tedua, Michele Placido, Vinicio Marchioni, Lolita Chammah, Brenno Placido, Gianluca Gobbi, Gianfranco Gallo, Michelangelo Placido, Moni Ovadio, Gianluca Gobbi, Gianfranco Gallo
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 120 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2023
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc
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The Catholic Church secretly investigates Caravaggio as the Pope weighs whether to grant him clemency for killing a rival.
Inquisitor, who is commissioned to investigate Caravaggio after he is charged with murder, and provide a report about his life to the Pope.
This portrait is in pieces, something like a jigsaw, visualised for the audience, highly dramatic and moving backwards and forwards in time, with the many flashbacks providing the audience with images and insights for them to finally put together all these pieces for some kind of understanding and appreciation of Caravaggio and his character.
The film has been co-written and directed by veteran actor, Michele Placido, who also appears as a patron of the artist, Cardinal Del Monte. Caravaggio is played by internationally known and popular Italian actor, Scarmacio. He is a dark and brooding presence, a complex character, content in the underbelly of Rome, happy with the regal patronage, especially from the Marquesa Colonna (Huppert), contacts with cardinals, unreliable, moody, sexually profligate, but with an innate sense of the Jesus of the Gospels, appreciation of the
Every person casts their own shadow. Celebrated 16th-17th century Italian painter, Michelangelo Merisi, best known as Caravaggio, certainly casts a long shadow – from his life in the slums of Rome and beyond, to the world of art in his own time and his artistic heritage. However, all that it is evident in this portrait of Caravaggio. But the ombra, ‘Shadow’ of the title refers to the agent of the Vatican, an Gospel narratives and a burning desire to re-create them in his art.
The Shadow of the title is played by French actor, Louis Garrel, perfect here as the relentless investigator, ambitious, single-minded, even rigid as regards doctrine and ecclesiastical order, who pursues his investigation, personal interrogations, resorting to water torture, interviewing the prostitutes and vagrants with some disdain, unafraid in challenging the nobility, finally a confrontation with the artist himself. This is a frightening portrait of an ecclesiastical inquisitor, admiring the works of art, but unhesitatingly condemning the artist for his life.
Set design and costumes and decor are marvellously portrayed to re-create the period, immersing the audience, especially in the low life of Rome. And, so many of Caravaggio’s paintings are brought to life, the finished works as well as the process of choosing the models, set-ups and posing, the artist and his work of painting. And the lighting of the film evokes the chiaroscuro light and darkness of the works at the beginning of the baroque period.
Scarmacio plays Caravaggio with all his faults, but with a deep innate sense of admiration for the Gospel stories, evoking audience sympathy for him. And, he notes that in his choices of prostitutes as models for portraying Mary, the mother of Jesus, and himself, after his throat is slashed by the vengeful brothers of the man Caravaggio fought in a duel and killed, the right choice for the image of Goliath. And some of the prostitutes themselves, exploited and persecuted, note that being chosen to portray Mary was a highlight of their lives.
Evocative, interesting, taking us back into a complex period of church history, with some interesting sequences featuring Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake as a heretic, the young artist, Artemisia, and St Philip Neri of the Oratory, seen sympathetically in the midst of the hardships and squalor in which he ministered.
Evocative also in raising all kinds of questions about artists in their times, their moral lives and choices, the relationship of these choices to the quality of their art and achievement.
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