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There’s an aching paradox at the heart of Caravaggio’s art. In seeking to bring realism to the sacred, he captured the unexpected beauty of a world of beggars, prostitutes and the light and shadow of poor folks’ living quarters. He thus elevated the sacred more exquisitely than almost anybody who preceded him.
This latest film from Italian director Michele Placido, best known for the 2005 crime drama Romanzo Criminale, benefits—and sometimes suffers—from the same paradox. Sumptuously capturing those famous chiaroscuro effects, Caravaggio’s Shadow is a frank, often brutal portrait smothered in a patina of good taste.
Caravaggio, as played by Riccardo Scamarcio (the main bad guy from John Wick 2) is virile, swaggering and soulful—a Renaissance painter as rock god. The Shadow of the title is an agent (Louis Garrel) employed by the Pope to investigate whether Caravaggio deserves to be pardoned for killing a rival in a brawl. This police procedural method creates a kaleidoscopic, Citizen Kane-like composite of the artist. He’s seen through the eyes of those who loved, hated or sat for him, chief among them being his powerful protector, Constanza Sforza Colonna (Isabelle Huppert).
The Shadow is a bit like Salieri to Caravaggio’s Mozart—a dour custodian of conservative values discombobulated by his quarry’s unruly genius. And yet there’s a streak of conservatism running through the film, not least in its downplaying of Caravaggio’s status as a queer icon.
Derek Jarman’s 1986 Caravaggio was, characteristically, a far more radical biopic on every level. But if Placido plays it too safe and lays it on too thick, this handsomely mounted, often gripping historical thriller undeniably makes for an overwhelmingly sensual and immersive experience.
Caravaggio’s Shadow plays in Montreal from Dec. 8.
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