Title: Inside The mind of Leonardo da Vinci 3D
Director: Peter Capaldi
Starring: Peter Capaldi
The inspiring world of Leonardo da Vinci is brought to life by the acclaimed BAFTA award-winning actor Peter Capaldi, in a unique dramatised documentary. ‘Inside The Mind Of Leonardo’ is based on the artist’s private journals dating from the Italian Renaissance. More than 6,000 pages of handwritten notes and drawings, from da Vinci’s private journals are moulded by Capaldi into the mindscape of history’s greatest polymath.
The docudrama follows a biographical narrative, to portray the artist’s thwarted ambitions, hurt, anger, and sexual desire as documented within his diaries, but also the mundanity of normal life: his shopping lists, health tips, and bawdy jokes. Leonardo’s legacy is thusly brought back to life to make audiences feel how the exceptional Renaissance Man experienced the world around him.
Former ‘Doctor Who’ – Peter Capaldi – is engaging as Leonardo’s alter-ego and sure proves mastery as a director, as he capture’s the man’s unquenchable curiosity and feverishly inventive imagination. The stream of consciousness is epitomised through dialogue and visual flow of dreamlike images, portraying the humanist ideal of the Tuscan genius.
Leonardo as pupil of Florentine painter Verrocchio surpassed his master, conquering the patronage of Ludovico il Moro in Milan, to eventually mesmerise the cities of Rome, Bologna, Venice and conclude his last years in France under the protection of Francis I. His life alone adds up to more than many average lives collected in one, hence Peter Capaldi had a difficult challenge in accounting the existence of the most significant and fascinating figures of all time.
‘Inside The Mind Of Leonardo’ understandably neglects several aspects of Leonardo’s life – if not the movie could have easily become a television series – and Capaldi’s film is amongst the most effective movies on the Fifteenth Century painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. The man boasted a long life for his century, dying at 67, but most importantly it was a life lived fully, as he would have said: “Life well spent is long.”
Only someone who isn’t Italian could tribute the history of this man and return the noble vestige to the boot-shaped country. Praises to the Scottish film-maker for bringing back to life Maestro Leonardo Da Vinci and Italy’s grandeur.
Technical: A-
Acting: C+
Story: B+
Overall: B+
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
