![]() ![]() That is, for the first 12 minutes you find yourself doing a double take, wondering if you inadvertently clicked on one of the bonus features instead of “play movie.” A voiceover documentary on Michelangelo and his early work leading up to the Sistine Chapel commission fills the space. ![]() 12 minutes after the cameras start rolling. What can I say? It’s that kind of project-a Todd-AO 70mm high-resolution production that looks absolutely gorgeous once the film begins. So does liberal use of a cappella choral music that sounds ecstatic for the most part, but oddly screechy and agonizing for one scene. There are times when you’d swear it was actually filmed inside the decorous Vatican rather than the Dino De Laurentis Cinematografica Studios in Rome, and exterior shots of The Eternal City encourage the illusion. “The Agony and the Ecstasy” was nominated for five Academy Awards, None of them were big categories, but Hollywood did recognize the sumptuous visual style of the film (Art Direction, Costume Design, Cinematography) and its companion sound (Score, Sound), and for good reason. Heck, there’s even a two-minute black screen intermission, though at 138 minutes the Sir Carol Reed-directed film hardly seems to need it. There are wandering-in-the-wilderness moments, a burning-bush revelation, women whose love takes a back seat to destiny, a golden calf tantrum or two, and verbal jousting between a poor commoner and a man of wealth and power-all within the framework of a film that’s treated like a historical epic. The title comes from the Irving Stone novel upon which it’s based, and it refers to the laborious but rewarding process of painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that the artist Michelangelo-and his benefactor-slash-slavedriver, Pope Julius II-experienced.Ĭharlton Heston seems well chosen for the role of the 16th century sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti, partly because he already experienced a similar agony and ecstasy, and with a storyline that feels vaguely akin to what Heston-as-Moses went through in “The Ten Commandments” (1956). ![]()
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