Goya's Ghosts
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Movie Reviews of Goya's Ghosts
Movie Review: A Nearly Great Film that Nobody Saw
Summary: 4 Stars
Milos Forman's (Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) film about some of the fascinating events that occurred during the time of Francisco Goya was not widely seen and received for the most part mixed reviews. It was criticized primarily for being too slow and having a convoluted plot. I suppose I can see where those points might have merit but I found Goya's Ghosts pros to far outweigh the cons. So much so I was very close to giving this a five star rating. My one true hang-up was that the film is a Spanish production shot in English. Odd, and the mix of accents can be slightly annoying in flashes.
The performances here from Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, and Natalie Portman are highlights in all of their careers. This is probably the only time besides No Country for Old Men that I really watched Bardem. In the first half of this film Bardem plays a character that is behaviorally not very different from his role in 2007's best picture Oscar winner, but as Goya's Ghosts moves forward his character changes and Bardem's depth is on display. He really is a great actor. Portman on the other hand has always been touted as great for her potential but has never really had a showcase role. Here she does, and unfortunately no one saw it. Portman is a legitimate super-talent that only gets these tiny opportunities to show that off to the mainstream. Something tells me she doesn't care about that but it would be nice to see her land a big budget Oscar bait role where she can really get the credit she deserves. Stellan Skarsgård is good in almost everything he has ever done. Moreover, the supporting cast is also strong. Especially the performance of unlikely cast member Randy Quaid. That's right, I said Randy Quaid, who plays King Carlos IV.
The film is set in late 18th century Spain during the time of the French Revolution. Goya (Skarsgård), a famous artist for Spanish royalty, seemingly becomes a target from the inquisition. Lorenzo, a monk who soon becomes in charge of the inquisition's more intense initiatives, defends Goya. Lorenzo actually becomes a subject of one of Goya's paintings. Inés (Portman), a Goya muse, is soon targeted by the inquisition. This brings microcosmic conflict between many of the film's characters while the macrocosmic conflicts of the time period shift the characters even more profoundly. This makes for some very interesting and unpredictable circumstances. So much so, that it might be best to leave the rest unmentioned here. Suffice to say, I enjoyed this film far more than I thought I would.
Goya's Ghosts references his paintings effectively and although the film may be guilty of unlikely coincidences, some melodrama, and some historical inaccuracy; it is certainly no more guilty of those things than other period pieces that are widely acclaimed by today's critics. Goya is the straight man of Goya's Ghosts, he is the observer and his work is used toward the narrative while the film is used as a tribute of sorts toward his work. I see Goya's Ghosts as being one par with both One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. Perhaps if Foreman were appreciated today like he was twenty or thirty years ago critics would've received this film with the same level of praise? Not sure, but I'm recommending this.
Movie Review: "In Spain, during the Goya's time, I was searching for echoes of my own life under the Nazis and the Communists .." Milos Forman
Summary: 4 Stars
I think Milos Forman's quote gives a good idea to the viewers who wanted to see the biopic of the Spanish Painter, Francisco Goya, that the painter would not be a main character of the film. Memories of his own childhood and youth, reflection on the years spent under the suffocating power of the oppressive political regimes are the main subjects of his film that takes place in Spain of the late 18th -beginning of the 19th centuries and focuses realistically on the role of the Inquisition and its end under Napoleon's rule. Forman was a college student when he read and studied the book about Spanish Inquisition that affected all aspects in the lives of the ordinary people but it took him many years to envision the film that would bring his reflection to life through the paintings, drawings and prints of the great Artist who had captured the spirit of those times brilliantly.
I personally love "Goya's Ghosts. Visually, it was just like Goya's painting spanned in time and space. I've always admired Goya, ever since I read the novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, and saw Goya's paintings and prints first as a teenager in reproductions and Art books. Few years ago I saw many of his originals for the first time in Prado, Madrid. They were very different - dark, twisted, macabre, sensual, serene, tender, satiric, realistic, romantic, hallucinatory, surreal, very Spanish yet universal in their understanding of human nature. "Everyone wants to seem what they are not, all deceive each other and no-one knows himself," wrote Francisco Goya on one of his prints. His works are strange mixture of horror and hope, monsters born while the mind wonders in the dream world (the series Los Capriccios), the formal portraits of the royal family with not a single flattering image. They were created during the times when Inquisition ruled the country with an iron hand, and the time is the real hero of the Milos Forman's movie. Goya has been regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. It is not just a coincidence that Goya lived and created his paintings and prints that captured closely the time when Spain was changing slowly from old times to new modern epoch but how slow and painful the changes were. The story in the movie may seem too blizzard and implausible but if you look closer in the movie's images, you'd realize that the characters of the story, the whole surrealistic and wild content came directly from Goya's works, his paintings, drawings, and prints. He lived through surreal time, and the time got a fascinating treatment in his works and in the work of the great modern film director, Milos Forman. The final scene of the film with all Goya's ghosts presented and with him capturing the bitterly ironic in their grotesque absurdity images in his sketch book is a masterwork of cinema.
Movie Review: The crime of Judaism...
Summary: 4 Stars
This film was recommended to me because of my interest and novels on the Second Inquisition as applied to "conversos", the Italian Wars and, especially, the Conquest of Mexico. At that level the film didn't disappoint. A young woman from a wealthy merchant family is arrested for the high crime of refusing suckling pig at a party. She is put to "The Question", which is made all the more emphatic by her being stretched on the rack. She doesn't know what her "crime" is, so she is unable to answer the question. A few more turns of the screw and with a little help from the inquisitor, she finds that she must confess to being a secret Jew i.e. a New Christian, a converso, a secret Judaizer. She's a devout Catholic but, a few more turns, and she confesses to a crime she knows nothing about.
The girl's father knows that she has been called in for questioning by the Holy Office but doesn't know for what reason and doesn't know why she hasn't returned. He invites one Father Lorenzo, a familiar of the Inquisition, to his home and learns the truth. Lorenzo says he can't help because the girl has confessed and a confession, even under torture, is necessarily the truth. The father and his servants seize Lorenzo and put him to "The Question" by stretching him from the ceiling. Lorenzo's faith fails him and he confesses to being the bastard son of apes and admits, under torture, that he is attempting to subvert the Holy Office--the Inquisition.
To me this was the high point of the film. Afterwards things get muddled. There's Lorenzo's fall from Grace and an invasion by the French. There are atrocities and Lorenzo, who has fled to France and become a staunch Napoleon man, returns to lord it over his previous oppressors. The French, in their turn, are defeated by the English and Spanish guerillas. Lorenzo is captured and turned over to the newly reconstituted Inquisition. In a contorted sense, Lorenzo is redeemed by refusal to recant his previous errors to save his own life. Wearing the peaked hat and San Benito of a condemned heretic, he is garroted during an Auto de Fe in which hundreds cheer his death.
Yes, Goya is featured during the film but only as a backdrop against which the Lorenzo story is played. I enjoyed the film and found it informative.
Ron Braithwaite
Movie Review: Great Goya's Ghost
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an enjoyable and interesting movie. It is the work of Milos Forman of Amadeus fame. It is not the stunning, fast-paced and colorful display of Amadeus, but it is a fine looking and entertaining film chocked full of tasty historical and philosophical tidbits. It also has that sense of mystery that made Amadeus so great.
I thought it would be more biographical, but it turns into an interesting story about the end of the Golden Age of Spain as well as perspective on the War of Independence.
I won't give the story away because it is much more fun for the viewer to be surprised at the interesting twists and turns.
The acting can at times be a little stiff, but once the story was completed I appreciated it as a whole. So be patient and let it unfold.
The portrayal of Goya is subtle. He is not lionized or trashed. Stellan Skarsgård plays the role with a degree of sophistication and worldliness that is surprising. The acting of Natalie Portman is a take it or leave it proposition. However, the Brother Lorenzo played by Javier Bardem is a witty and enjoyable villain on par with Maestro Salieri. Randy Quaid is truly memorable as the aging, dimwitted King of Spain.
Many interesting historical events and artistic developments are on display in the film, so it is a feast for the lover of Spanish culture.
We can only hope we will see many more films of this kind. The movies is hardly a slave to history or a slave to convention. In telling an interesting story, the film gets the facts over and implies a great deal about life in Madrid at the turn of the 19th Century.
I have the DVD on the shelf and I am anxious to show it to another friend who has not seen it yet. It really adds to a pleasant day and gives you and your literary friends a lot to talk about.
Movie Review: Strong Cinematic Elements in Need of a Screenplay
Summary: 4 Stars
No question that Milos Forman knows how to achieve powerful effects with film. Unfortunately, in this fantasy on the paintings and prints of Goya, the framework is weak. In spots one gets cinematic highlights and effective interaction of characters, in other spots, however, one gets the most hoary of film images and situations. Except for a few scenes, where an image is allowed which would have banned by the Hayes Office, one could imagine oneself watching, once more, an Irving Thalberg film starring his wife, Norma Shearer, such as Marie Antoinette (although nobody in this film resembles the hero of that one, beautiful Tyrone Power). Beyond that weakness, the story itself lacks a sense of filmatic inevitability. In key segments, one gets the feeling that they appear to appease the creators need to get the scene in, rather than because they had to happen. That sense, that some particular action grows from the nature of the film's reality, is crucial to a fine film; in other words, in reality the action may be ridiculously unreal, but in the film it clearly arises from necessity.
Despite these criticisms, for most of us, this film is worth the time taken to watch it. One will enjoy the photography and scenic design; one will find some of the acting and scenes quite appealing. What is not so good, causes little pain, making the experience a positive one.