Caravaggio Details

With Nigel Terry excelling in the lead, this portrait of the artist as a gay man is Derek Jarman's most accessible, revealing and beautiful work. Jarman frees himself from the constraints of the traditional biopic by slotting anachronistic details into a mise en scène that is almost mannerist in its solemn grandeur. He investigates not only the painter's relationships with male model Sean Bean and his mistress, Tilda Swinton, but also the source of his inspiration. And, since this is a study of a visual medium, he constantly forces us to seek significance in gestures, silences and exquisitely reproduced tableaux.

As Caravaggio (excellently played by Terry) lies dying at Porto Ercole in 1610, his mind drifts back over a short... read more on Time Out