This film deals with a painter of great fame from the end of the Renaissance. It is the story of a man of course but also of his assistant. He literally bought a mute boy out of his misery when he was a small child and took him to his studio to work for him, to grind his colors and prepare his paints. He will of course use the child as a model for some exuberant bacchic scenes overloaded with fruits of all sorts. The mute boy becomes the friend of the painter and little by little this friendship must have become love, real love, the mental and sentimental passion.
On the other hand the artist is attracted by male bodies mostly but in the strength they demonstrate when they are fighting. So he is looking for violence, muscular tension, aggressiveness in males, one body against another, and some compositions of several men demonstrating their power in some scenes implying violence and cruelty. This search for violent brutality excludes love. It is pure desire and one of these men will have a tragic ending because he understood this desire required him to love the artist back and thus to do what he thought the artist wanted him to do. His mistake, especially since it was killing a pregnant woman.
The only one who has the right (the artists granted him that right), the duty (the artists expected him to do what's concerned here), the obligation even to love him back, is the young assistant because that assistant was bought and is the artist's possession, the only person the artist has the duty and the obligation to take care of as if he were his own child. And in this case it is real love from the artist to the assistant and from the assistant to the artist, to and fro and back all the time. This assistant will bring the artist to his own death on his own death bed and he will be the only one able to bring him to death in peace, to grant him death in a way, though it will be for the assistant a tragedy, a drama with a phenomenal solitude afterwards, though this is not explored in the film.
All other men the artists selects on their own strength are supposed to accept his love but definitely not love him back. They do not have that right because the artist only satisfies his own desire but never ever anything that has any real sentimental or mental dimension. He uses these men as satisfying actors in his sexual desire just the same way as he uses them as props in his studio to compose a scene that he can then paint on the canvass.
Living and working close to the Pope, Caravaggio is classified a sodomite but tolerated because of his art, because of the marvelous paintings he can produce. But in this extremely sectarian and fundamentalistic society he is living in he is obliged to mind every step of his and pay for his privilege a very high artistic price. The result is that he is locked up in his sodomite closet and he has no way to get out of it. So his love is nothing but a perversion and he cannot expect from anyone to love him since it would be a perversion too. Then his love is reduced to a gross physical and violent impulse and he takes what he needs to satisfy this impulse, he pays for it since it is nothing but a forbidden fruit that has a very high price, and it is finished. Full stop. Period.
And that is the moment when you start wondering about his assistant. Man cannot live without any love. If any love between two men is impossible as a permanent and stable relation, you have to disguise this relation in a way or another. The mute assistant is perfect since Caravaggio got him when he was six or seven and he has a very clear function and position to satisfy. The relation is seen by most people more like the relation between a father and a son and the possible sexual dimension of it might very well never have been consumed. Art least this part was not important. What was important was the tears shed by the assistant when his master died, when he brought him to death.
I would easily say that any man longs for such a relation that is not and cannot be carnal. Men finds that in younger people who are their sons or close male relatives, at times younger men who need some mentor or leader or adviser. It is love but draped in some age or cultural dependency that makes it acceptable. Such a relation will never be sexual because it would be antagonistic with what the passion it contains means.
And that distance in time between Caravaggio and us is clearly identified in the film with all kinds of anachronistic sounds or objects: electricity at the end of the 15th century, motorbikes, cars, trains, helicopters, cigarettes, etc. Has the world improved or is it still the same? I would say that in 1886 it probably looked pretty the same as around 1600. But it may also mean that luckily progress will bring some new way of looking at life and love.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
On the other hand the artist is attracted by male bodies mostly but in the strength they demonstrate when they are fighting. So he is looking for violence, muscular tension, aggressiveness in males, one body against another, and some compositions of several men demonstrating their power in some scenes implying violence and cruelty. This search for violent brutality excludes love. It is pure desire and one of these men will have a tragic ending because he understood this desire required him to love the artist back and thus to do what he thought the artist wanted him to do. His mistake, especially since it was killing a pregnant woman.
The only one who has the right (the artists granted him that right), the duty (the artists expected him to do what's concerned here), the obligation even to love him back, is the young assistant because that assistant was bought and is the artist's possession, the only person the artist has the duty and the obligation to take care of as if he were his own child. And in this case it is real love from the artist to the assistant and from the assistant to the artist, to and fro and back all the time. This assistant will bring the artist to his own death on his own death bed and he will be the only one able to bring him to death in peace, to grant him death in a way, though it will be for the assistant a tragedy, a drama with a phenomenal solitude afterwards, though this is not explored in the film.
All other men the artists selects on their own strength are supposed to accept his love but definitely not love him back. They do not have that right because the artist only satisfies his own desire but never ever anything that has any real sentimental or mental dimension. He uses these men as satisfying actors in his sexual desire just the same way as he uses them as props in his studio to compose a scene that he can then paint on the canvass.
Living and working close to the Pope, Caravaggio is classified a sodomite but tolerated because of his art, because of the marvelous paintings he can produce. But in this extremely sectarian and fundamentalistic society he is living in he is obliged to mind every step of his and pay for his privilege a very high artistic price. The result is that he is locked up in his sodomite closet and he has no way to get out of it. So his love is nothing but a perversion and he cannot expect from anyone to love him since it would be a perversion too. Then his love is reduced to a gross physical and violent impulse and he takes what he needs to satisfy this impulse, he pays for it since it is nothing but a forbidden fruit that has a very high price, and it is finished. Full stop. Period.
And that is the moment when you start wondering about his assistant. Man cannot live without any love. If any love between two men is impossible as a permanent and stable relation, you have to disguise this relation in a way or another. The mute assistant is perfect since Caravaggio got him when he was six or seven and he has a very clear function and position to satisfy. The relation is seen by most people more like the relation between a father and a son and the possible sexual dimension of it might very well never have been consumed. Art least this part was not important. What was important was the tears shed by the assistant when his master died, when he brought him to death.
I would easily say that any man longs for such a relation that is not and cannot be carnal. Men finds that in younger people who are their sons or close male relatives, at times younger men who need some mentor or leader or adviser. It is love but draped in some age or cultural dependency that makes it acceptable. Such a relation will never be sexual because it would be antagonistic with what the passion it contains means.
And that distance in time between Caravaggio and us is clearly identified in the film with all kinds of anachronistic sounds or objects: electricity at the end of the 15th century, motorbikes, cars, trains, helicopters, cigarettes, etc. Has the world improved or is it still the same? I would say that in 1886 it probably looked pretty the same as around 1600. But it may also mean that luckily progress will bring some new way of looking at life and love.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU