© Netflix
Could the decor of the Sistine Chapel have had a second life?
Sets for movies and TV shows are getting more and more complicated. Could installations like Netflix's Sistine Chapel have a second life in the future? In the 2019 Netflix movie The Two Popes, which is about Pope Benedict XVI's sudden and unprecedented handover of power to Pope Francis, the two men meet in an empty Sistine Chapel early one morning. "You must remember that you are not God; you are a person," Pope Benedict, played by Anthony Hopkins, tells Cardinal Bergoglio, played by Jonathan Pryce, who will soon become Pope Francis. Hopkins points out that Michelangelo's The Last Judgment shows Christ as a powerful figure. He says, "There He is." As Benedict and Bergoglio talk about sin, forgiveness, and absolution, the camera stays on close-ups of the great Renaissance artist's masterpiece, which is painted in blues, oranges, and greens that look like the sky, fire, and life.
Right after filming, this stunning $5 million set was demolished
The screenplay for the movie was written by Anthony McCarten, who was nominated for an Oscar. He said that the set cost $5 million to make and was a few inches bigger than the real thing. He said that destroying it was a "crime."
"Unfortunately, I watched them destroy it after we finished filming, and I thought, 'Oh God, I would love to take the end panel,' which was a complete, to-scale replica of the Last Judgment painted in beautiful, bright colors," McCarten, who also wrote the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody and the Churchill war saga Darkest Hour, told. "What a crime," I thought.
© Netflix
It is not possible to film in the Vatican
The Vatican rarely lets people film inside its borders, so filmmakers have had to come up with creative, but often expensive and time-consuming, ways to make the Sistine Chapel look as grand as it does in real life. Except for the 1965 movie "The Agony and the Ecstasy," which shows Michelangelo working on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–1512), most movies haven't tried to show the 66-foot-high frescoes because it would be hard to build a set that high or close to it. Most of the paintings on the ceiling, like the famous one in the middle that shows God giving Adam life through his fingertip, were made with special effects, if they were made at all.
Usually, filmmakers show the Last Judgment fresco
More often than not, filmmakers have used the artist's Last Judgment fresco, which was finished in 1541 and covers the whole back wall of the chapel behind the altar, instead of the ceiling. Sinners swirling around Christ in a dynamic way, with the saved being lifted up to Heaven on one side and the damned being pulled down into Hell by demons on the other, has been physically shown on screen many times. But Mark Tildesley, the production designer for The Two Popes, did it better than anyone else. He hired a team of artists who were good at copying classical paintings to make a copy of Michelangelo's masterpiece.
© Netflix
A "tattoo" type reproduction technique was used
They painted copies of the Renaissance artist's figures, which were then photographed and printed on sheets of plastic film. The film was put on the walls of the replica chapel, and a chemical was put on it so that the color would seep through the film and into the wall, just like real frescoes do. This "tattooing" process gave Netflix's Last Judgment a luminous quality that reminded people of the original's bright colors and ethereal light after a thorough restoration in the 1980s more than any other remake. Simply put, there has never been a better Sistine Chapel on screen than the real one.
The copy was made at Cinecitta', which is one of Rome's oldest movie studios. It would have been hard to store on-site and hard to move elsewhere because of how big it was, but Netflix isn't thought to have done anything to find a new home for its spectacular setting.
© Netflix
Could we have saved this setting?
McCarten said, "The movie business is awful like that." "We make big, important parts of history, and when we're done filming, we leave the set, get in our cars, and as we drive away, we hear the sound of sledgehammers. The work was put together with great care, but in an hour it's all gone. You just have to turn away because it's too sad." McCarten is now working on a film called The Collaboration, which will tell the story of Andy Warhol's friendship with Jean-Michel Basquiat. The film is still in the pre-production stage. The play on which the movie is based opened at the Young Vic theater in London in February. In November, it will move to Broadway.
So, what else could Netflix have done with its Sistine Chapel? The beautiful Last Judgment replica could have been taken apart and sold to someone else.
Jean Dubreil