Please keep in mind that Caligula is an extremely pornographic movie; continue reading the review with that in mind, if you wish. Unlike all of my previous reviews, I will be starting with the technical aspects of Caligula, then moving into the actual movie itself. I think more people focus on the end of the review, not the beginning, and believe the actual review of Caligula, as a movie, is far more important than the review of its Blu-ray parts. With that in mind, let’s start with the visual aspect of Caligula on Blu-ray.
The visual quality of Caligula is exactly what you would expect from a movie made 30 years ago. Grafting a movie onto a Blu-ray disc can slightly improve the quality of the look, but what really matters is the quality of the film that was used in the first place. Caligula used low-quality film for the cameras, and that shows up when you try and watch the movie on a HDTV. You can easily see ghosting, the grains of the film, and several other problems with the actual imagery.
That said, however, not all was bad. With the move to Blu-ray, the colors of the film seemed to become brighter, and the black levels were deeper. This is easily noticeable in the first few scenes, especially the opening forest scene and the introductory swimming scene. I am not sure exactly what caused this change, if it was a digital enhancement or simply a product of the Blu-ray process. Either way, the color change was appreciated and very interesting.
Moving onto sound, you notice that Caligula is not presented in the normal Dolby TruHD that is typical of Blu-ray movies. Nope, it is presented in a Dolby sound that is stereo; the typical one you will find from standard DVDs. I was not too happy with the sound quality, but I didn’t expect much coming from a movie that is roughly 30 years old. There are occasional spots where the sound mixing fizzles, where dialog is lost, and a few times the volume change is absurd. Once or twice the music got a bit too loud, and it drowned out everything else.
Let’s talk about Caligula as a movie. To start, I think we should have a little history lesson. Ancient Rome was not sexually obsessed in any manner. As a Roman History major friend put it, “They were much more open about sex; however, they were also far more conservative then modern America.” Basically, the Romans were fine with the concept of sex, but they were not having sex all of the time, nor were they having sex in public. This is a major theme of Caligula, and one that is greatly incorrect. Sure, it might be a movie, but I do not like things this historically off of center. No matter what you might see saying otherwise, the Romans were not hyper sexualized.
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