The Austin Film Society will hold a screening of Derek Jarman’s 1986 faux-bio, Caravaggio, tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar.
The film is the director’s largely fictional rendering of homoerotic Baroque painter Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio’s life. Caravaggio is most known for his use of naturalism combined with intense chiaroscuro lighting in his paintings, a combination that gave his religious themed works a deeply provocative spiritualism. The film opens with his death via lead poisoning but recounts his life in fragments, moving from his apprenticeship with Cardinal Del Monte to his turbulent relationships with art subject Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and Ranuccio’s girlfriend, Lena (played by Jarman mainstay Tilda Swinton).
Jarman dallies in deliberate anachronisms, infusing Caravaggio’s mysterious life with a soundtrack and props from the 20th century. The result is one artist’s sympathetic experiment in bringing another artist’s story to life. Check the AFS website for more information.
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