cinehunch
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
01
Why this pick
Jarman again turns a canonical historical figure into a fiercely stylised, queer portrait: theatrical space, deliberate anachronism, sensual imagery, and political anger replace conventional period realism.
02
Why this pick
Its rigidly composed seventeenth-century tableaux and cool, artificial period world echo Caravaggio’s painterly visual intelligence, while its fragmented clues make looking itself feel charged and uncertain.
03
Why this pick
Greenaway gives Rembrandt’s life the same kind of erotic, conspiratorial, highly composed historical treatment: living bodies and courtly power arranged with the density of paintings.
04
Why this pick
Jarman’s Latin-language Roman fantasia shares Caravaggio’s homoerotic gaze, sculptural male bodies, and purposeful historical unreality, with ritualised images taking precedence over conventional dramatic momentum.
05
Why this pick
This austere chamber portrait finds grandeur in stillness, candlelight, fabric, and the vulnerable body. Its slow, painterly attention to mortality resonates with Caravaggio’s death-haunted opening and visual texture.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
Told in a segmented fashion, the film opens as Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) dies from lead poisoning while in exile, with only his long-time deaf-dumb companion Jerusaleme (Spencer Leigh (actor)) (who was given by his family to the artist as a boy) by his side. Caravaggio thinks back to his life as a teenage street ruffian (Dexter Fletcher) who hustles and paints. While taken ill and in the care of priests, young Caravaggio catches the eye of Cardinal Del Monte (Michael Gough). Del Monte nurtures Caravaggio's artistic and intellectual development but also appears to molest him.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
Caravaggio
Lena
Jerusaleme
Cardinal Del Monte
Davide
Giustiniani
Art Lover
Fra Filippo
