Goya's Ghosts (2006)
I'm not sure why they felt they had to pivot this fictional story around a real painter, the great tormented Francisco Goya. Because the main story is completely fictional, about a young woman (Portman) and a priest (Bardem) and their interactions. And about the torture and imprisonment so common in Spain at the time. The conflict between the secular and the sacred, and between clergy and royalty, is part of the social and political intrigue the tries to light up the film.
But Goya really has nothing to do with all this, and even his character is a kind of guide or unifying thread through a lot of disturbing and meandering up and down events. What Goya does provide, I think, is a kind of realistic gruesomeness behind it all. That's a key part of his work, and perhaps it inspired the filmmakers. The time (late 1700s to early 1800s) was physically rough, and life was cheap, to be sure. The effects of torture and war are everywhere in Goya's work, and thus in this disappointing movie.
The plot, as such, is really a series of conflicts between these spheres of power and it doesn't suck you in for the long haul. What it does do well is create individual moments, with both terrific set design and with horrid grotesqueness. This might not be your cup of tea when it has no protagonist to quite get in with. Certainly among the three main characters, the young woman arouses purely pity (she is used, tortured, raped, and left to rot) and the priest arouses curiosity (at his changing politics and beliefs, his contradictory impulses). These kinds of stereotypes are not awful clichés, the movie doesn't sink to parody, but themes like this have been woven together better elsewhere. You get a sense the director, Milos Forman, was aiming for another "Amadeus," his masterpiece set around the same time, with its humanizing of famous figures and with the intrigues of power. But the writing here, partly by Forman, is daily bread stuff, nothing as inventive and ingenious as Peter Shaffer's play used for Mozart's story.
It should be said that Portman also plays another part, that of the illegitimate daughter of her first character, and of course she looks rather like her mom. Which of course makes the priest have a restrained frenzy--how lucky, he grows twenty years older and the woman of his dreams is reborn. It's a movie-making conceit, a fun one out of place here, though nice of Portman to show off her malleability.
The third character? Yes, our tour guide, Goya himself? The actor, Swedish star Stellan Starsgard, plays a bit of the everyman, not quite as focused and intense as you might suppose the real Goya to be. But who knows? What we do see of him has nothing to do with his actual life or work. Even the paintings he paints are just Goyaesque portraits of the other two characters. Great for some Hollywood memorabilia auction some day!
In the end this lands somewhere between thrilling, sensationalist, and awkward. But beautifully awkward.
I'm not sure why they felt they had to pivot this fictional story around a real painter, the great tormented Francisco Goya. Because the main story is completely fictional, about a young woman (Portman) and a priest (Bardem) and their interactions. And about the torture and imprisonment so common in Spain at the time. The conflict between the secular and the sacred, and between clergy and royalty, is part of the social and political intrigue the tries to light up the film.
But Goya really has nothing to do with all this, and even his character is a kind of guide or unifying thread through a lot of disturbing and meandering up and down events. What Goya does provide, I think, is a kind of realistic gruesomeness behind it all. That's a key part of his work, and perhaps it inspired the filmmakers. The time (late 1700s to early 1800s) was physically rough, and life was cheap, to be sure. The effects of torture and war are everywhere in Goya's work, and thus in this disappointing movie.
The plot, as such, is really a series of conflicts between these spheres of power and it doesn't suck you in for the long haul. What it does do well is create individual moments, with both terrific set design and with horrid grotesqueness. This might not be your cup of tea when it has no protagonist to quite get in with. Certainly among the three main characters, the young woman arouses purely pity (she is used, tortured, raped, and left to rot) and the priest arouses curiosity (at his changing politics and beliefs, his contradictory impulses). These kinds of stereotypes are not awful clichés, the movie doesn't sink to parody, but themes like this have been woven together better elsewhere. You get a sense the director, Milos Forman, was aiming for another "Amadeus," his masterpiece set around the same time, with its humanizing of famous figures and with the intrigues of power. But the writing here, partly by Forman, is daily bread stuff, nothing as inventive and ingenious as Peter Shaffer's play used for Mozart's story.
It should be said that Portman also plays another part, that of the illegitimate daughter of her first character, and of course she looks rather like her mom. Which of course makes the priest have a restrained frenzy--how lucky, he grows twenty years older and the woman of his dreams is reborn. It's a movie-making conceit, a fun one out of place here, though nice of Portman to show off her malleability.
The third character? Yes, our tour guide, Goya himself? The actor, Swedish star Stellan Starsgard, plays a bit of the everyman, not quite as focused and intense as you might suppose the real Goya to be. But who knows? What we do see of him has nothing to do with his actual life or work. Even the paintings he paints are just Goyaesque portraits of the other two characters. Great for some Hollywood memorabilia auction some day!
In the end this lands somewhere between thrilling, sensationalist, and awkward. But beautifully awkward.