Bacon’s Arena

British painter Francis Bacon lived a life as excessive as the violent images he depicted in his paintings. This fascinating documentary explores his life and career chronologically, using movie clips, interviews with family, friends, lovers, shots of his work, and archival footage. Low traces the influences on Bacon’s painting and his life - artists who inspired him, his obsession with violence and his penchant for rough sex with edgy men. He comes across as alternately charming, arrogant, drunk and just plain nasty. What do you make of a man who, just hours after finding his lover dead from an overdose, went to the opening of his exhibition? Ultimately, it was this ability to do exactly as he wanted that defined him as one of the most important painters of the 20th century.