Directed by Derek Jarman • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Nigel Terry, Sean Bean, Garry Cooper

Derek Jarman’s most profound reflection on art, sexuality, and identity retells the life of the celebrated seventeenth-century painter through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld. Stewing in Rome’s underbelly during the late Italian Renaissance, Michelangelo da Caravaggio was plucked from the streets by the Catholic Church to paint austere Biblical exaltations. CARAVAGGIO incorporates the painter’s precise chiaroscuro aesthetic into the movie’s own visuals, while touching on all of Jarman’s major concerns: history, homosexuality, violence, and the relationship between painting and film.