Screening of “Caravaggio” at Floyd Memorial Library

“Caravaggio” is the third installment in the Floyd Memorial Library’s summer-long series of free screenings of art-related Thursday night films.

Writer/director Derek Jarman injects his patented iconoclasm in this biography of Renaissance artist Michelangelo Merisa da Caravaggio. Nigel Terry plays the title role, whom (according to Jarman) essentially told his own life story in his paintings. Caravaggio travelled among thieves and prostitutes, many of whom were his models. He once killed a man, kept a deaf/mute child as a virtual slave, and squandered every penny he ever made. That we should care anything about so miserable and obscure a personality is a tribute to Jarman’s filmmaking savvy–and the number of elements from his own well-publicized life that he injects into the film