"When looking at my works, Man only has ungodly thoughts... I wanted to lead him to God."
— Michelangelo Buonarroti
Sin (Russian: Грех; Italian: Il peccato – Il furore di Michelangelo) is a 2019 Russian-Italian historical biopic film directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. Most of the cast is Italian.
The film depicts a few years of the life of one of the most famous artistic figures of the Italian Renaissance, painter and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti (played by Alberto Testone), in the early 16th century.
Michelangelo is depicted as a pious and argumentative artist who, although widely considered a genius by his contemporaries, is reduced to poverty and depleted by his struggle to finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. While painting the ceiling, he is also pressured to simultaneously complete the statues which are part of the tomb designed and intended for Pope Julius II. He then goes back and forth between the cities of Florence, Rome and Carrara, juggles the money he received for his orders and goes extracting a huge block of marble as the power feuds between Italian noble families of The City State Era intensify. When Julius II dies, Michelangelo finds himself caught in the middle of said feuds, since his artistic genius is sought after by each side. He also has strange visions through it all.
See also The Agony and the Ecstasy, another film that explores Michelangelo's tribulations at the time, focusing solely on the Sistine Chapel situation.
Sin provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adipose Rex: Pope Leo X verges on super obesity, and seemingly has gout on his feet.
- Affluent Ascetic: Michelangelo has amassed a significant fortune both in money and property due to being the most sought-after artist in Italy, but he lives extremely modestly: renting tiny rooms in squalid houses, eating salt fish and other inexpensive "peasant" food, and dressing in tattered old rags. This is partly because he knows that members of his family will squander his wealth, but it's also due to his belief in living a simple, almost monastic life and devoting himself entirely to his artwork.
- Ambiguously Gay: The relationship between Michelangelo and his treacherous assistant Peppe, who turns on Michelangelo because "he no longer loves [him]." Whether Michelangelo and Peppe's relationship was Platonic or sexual is debatable. In life, Michelangelo greatly preferred men aesthetically and socially, but he lived such an ascetic and pious life that it's quite likely that he seldom if ever actually engaged in sexual acts of any kind with anybody.
- Art Imitates Art: When Michelangelo comes to see a Medici cardinal, there's a lady with an ermine in her arms standing in the room. This is of course a reference to the famous painting
by Leonardo da Vinci. It is dubious however that she could be Cecilia Gallerani, the portrait's alleged model and the mistress of Duke of Milan Ludovico "il Moro" Sforza. The actress' age kind of matches, but Gallerani lived in Milan while the scene takes place in Rome. The painting was made over 25 years prior by this point. - Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: In-Universe, and not entirely caused by the artist himself. Michelangelo already struggles to finish painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the beginning, but then Pope Julius II orders him to sculpt an absurd amount of statues for a monumental tomb for himself. Then, while searching for a block of marble in Carrara, he decides to draw the young Maria for a future work.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Maria, the young woman who helps supply the quarry workers with food and water in Carrara, catches the eye of Michelangelo, though only because he's fascinated by her beauty for artistic purposes. She leans quite a bit on plus size, fuller figured women were deemed both powerful and beautiful in Real Life during the Renaissance (they were featured prominently in Michelangelo's own Sistine Chapel paintings as well).
- Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: Maria and Pietro get murdered the very next day after their wedding. The face of Maria's body is covered by her wedding dress, which is stained with blood.
- Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: The Marchese (marquess) Malaspina has an Arabic right-hand man named Al Farab. Michelangelo states that he's a Syrian Assassin (even though the Order of Assassins has been disbanded in 1275, over 238 years earlier).
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Francesco Maria Della Rovere makes it very clear to Michelangelo (who's kind of a scoundrel when it comes to money, though it's partly because his family ruins him) that the only reason he's still alive is because of his artistic genius.
- Celibate Eccentric Genius: Michelangelo never married and it's likely that his attachments to various men (such as Peppe in the film) were usually Platonic. He's so consumed by his work and his religious piety that he has no time for romantic or sexual relations with anybody.
- Coitus Uninterruptus: One night, Michelangelo hears immodest orgasms in the courtyard and stumbles upon Maria having unmarried sex with his assistant Pietro. They don't seem to even notice his presence, and he then takes Maria's hand and observes it in awe, not being interested by anything else. And Maria either willingly lets him take her hand, or she thinks it's Pietro's.
- Cute Kitten: When wandering in the streets of Florence and coming across the remains of executed criminals, Michelangelo finds two adorable white kitten and cuddles them.
- Defiled Forever: Maria is shamed by her household for having non-married sex (with Pietro). Which prompts Pietro to declare his intention to marry her. They end up marrying happily afterwards, that being said. It doesn't last, sadly, as both end up killed the very next day.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: After Pope Julius II came to see Michelangelo in his workshop (where he was working on the Moses), berated him and beat him up with a stick "like a father would", he has a sudden stroke. Then Michelangelo wakes up (it was All a Dream, though the beating did happen historically), and rushes to the Pope's bedroom, and sees him dead.
- The Dung Ages: People empty the content of their chamber pots in the streets through the windows in both Florence and Carrara. Michelangelo ends up mildly showered twice.
- Eccentric Artist: Michelangelo is very pious, he's obsessed by Dante Alighieri's Inferno from The Divine Comedy, and knows it by heart. He is an Insufferable Genius and a Nervous Wreck, and only cares about his projects. He also starts having hallucinations after a while.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: Whenever there's a Title In indicating a location, there's a famous landmark of said location. For Rome/the Vatican, it's either the Castel Sant'Angelo or the districts built over Roman ruins, and for Florence it's either the Palazzo Vecchio (complete with Michelangelo's own David) or the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral.
- Fan Boy: Michelangelo is a big admirer of Dante Alighieri, having memorized Inferno from The Divine Comedy word for word. He's thrilled to be housed in the room the man once slept and worked in, and uses the room's Secret Underground Passage to go to the same rocky valley Dante went to.
- Funny Background Event: When Michelangelo and Sansovino are walking in the streets of Carrara, a man is having sex with a prostitute standing up in the background. They don't even pay attention.
- Hallucinations: Michelangelo starts seeing hallucinations at some point, when he sees something like a big worm covered in blood and moving in the clothes of a sleeping man, only to see that nothing was there in the first place. At the end, he sees Dante Alighieri himself in his iconic red robe.
- How We Got Here: The movie opens with Michelangelo walking on the roads of Tuscany, ranting about several things including the decadent courts he has to work for. Then the bulk of the movie is about the years prior to this, and the film ends with him on the same road again, this time carrying a model of St. Peter's Basilica (he historically was one of its architects).
- Imagine Spot: Several, the most notable of which are Michelangelo's conversations with his hero, Dante Alighieri (who died more than a century and a half prior to Michelangelo's birth).
- I Work Alone: Michelangelo categorically refuses any help for the sculpting work.
- Making the Masterpiece: A very unusual angle was chosen by the filmmaker here, might as well qualify as a slight subversion. At no point is Michelangelo seen sculpting something (much like the eponymous protagonist of Andrei Rublev by Konchalovsky's friend and influence Andrei Tarkovsky was never showed painting anything). At best, he polishes the knee of his Moses. The crux of the film is his struggle to make the sculptures of Julius II's tomb as he's caught in-between power changes (the Medici family displacing the Della Rovere for the control of the Holy See and Italy after Julius II's death), and the work in the marble quarry (because yes, all that marble has to come from somewhere).
- Mr. Red Ink: Michelangelo puts his family in Florence charge of his money... and they spend it in careless manners, leading him to get broke.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: When Michelangelo bumps into his assistant having sex with Maria, the only thing he's interested in is observing Maria's hand in awe, as he really wants her as model for his art.
- The Pig-Pen: In Rome, Raphael comments on Michelangelo not having washed himself for a while.
- Public Execution: When wandering in the streets of Florence at the beginning, Michelangelo stumbles upon a freshly hanged man right next to his David at the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. There's also another man's cut off head atop a gibbet iron cage.
- Revenge: After it was discovered that the blacksmith's shoddy workmanship on chain links caused the fatal accident at the quarry, Michelangelo goes to his shop to confront him, only to find that the blacksmith had already been murdered, most likely either by the accident victim's fellow workers or his family.
- The Rival:
- Raphael Sanzio to Michelangelo. The latter even pretends that Raphael learned everything from him.
- The Medici and Della Rovere families are in a feud for the control of the Holy See and Italy itself.
- Starving Artist: At the beginning, Michelangelo's father and brothers spend pretty much all of the money that he spared in many things that are not of "absolute necessity" as he pointed out to them, resulting in him being poor when working on the Sistine Chapel's ceiling and desperately waiting for the Pope's next payment.
- Title In: Happens anytime there's a new location, and even several times at the same location without Michelangelo having moved somewhere else, somehow.
