Sin

The film presents Michelangelo not as a genius but as a man chasing work. Popes change, patrons change, the artist promises himself to both and tries to stay ahead of his debts. His hands are filthy, his clothes are filthy, he is frightened and he lies. At the centre sits a block of marble, an enormous piece cut at Carrara that the workers call the Monster. Getting it down the mountain is the longest and most tense passage in the film, and it costs a quarryman his life. The question of who pays for a work of art comes out of that sequence. Andrei Konchalovsky cast Alberto Testone, who was not a professional actor, as Michelangelo, and the quarry scenes use men who still cut marble at Carrara today, speaking their own dialect. The demand it makes is real. Two hours moving slowly, a scattered chronology, and political rivalries that will confuse anyone without some grounding in the period. Who it is for: viewers who like Renaissance history and grimy period realism. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a conventional artist biopic.