La sublime fatica

In 1966, Luciano Emmer was commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox to shoot a promotional film for a movie about Michelangelo starring Charlton Heston. When the deal with the Americans fell through, Emmer retrieved the footage and edited it into a documentary about Michelangelo the man, exploring the anxieties and fears revealed in his writings. The sound of the chisel on marble blends with that of a heartbeat. The skewed perspectives on Michelangelo’s sculpture reinforce this idea of the difficulty and effort from which the...