Caravaggio review – articulate and intelligent portrait of the art titan’s life and work

<p>This new addition to the Exhibition on Screen series features an alarmingly plausible-looking actor as the great man himself</p><p>The latest offering from the estimable Exhibition on Screen strand takes on one of the biggies – and with a title like that, it is also perhaps treading on other hallowed ground: that of Derek Jarman, whose 1986 biopic is arguably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/20/rule-breaker-for-the-ages-why-caravaggio-is-our-screen-ages-art-superstar">the most brilliant rendering of the great painter’s life and death</a>. By contrast, this Caravaggio is a much more orthodox art-documentary treatment of its subject, playing to the strengths that the EoS films have built up over the years: beautifully crisp and detailed closeups of the work, well-informed and articulate talking-heads, and a nicely judged overall approach that is intelligent but not indigestible.</p><p>To be fair, this particular artist is well worked territory, so to spruce things up, the joint directors, David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky, cut in sequences with a monologuing actor, Jack Bannell, in character as Caravaggio. The aim is to fill in the void of the painter’s personality, of which, outside police and court reports, very little is known. Bannell certainly gives it his all and, tricked out in full beard and makeup effect facial wound, definitely looks the part – alarmingly so when the film cuts to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_with_the_Head_of_Goliath_(Caravaggio,_Rome)#/media/File:David_with_the_Head_of_Goliath-Caravaggio_(1610).jpg">a shot of David with the Head of Goliath</a>, which gruesomely contains Caravaggio’s own features on the severed head. It’s not a totally successful device: there’s occasionally something of the one-man-fringe-play about it, but in its favour it gets across the trigger points in Caravaggio’s life, particularly the final few year