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Goya's
Ghosts
(2006)
 
Oscar winning director Milos Forman returns to
his area of expertise in his newest film, Goya's Ghosts. Here
he once again explores the interrelatedness
of insanity and art as he so successfully did in Amadeus and
Man on the Moon to recount the progression of one
of history's most enigmatic and influential painters, Francisco
Goya. Unlike its predecessors, Goya's Ghosts looks
at insanity around the artist (as opposed to in his own mind)
and dutifully pays homage to the inspirations of the Eighteenth
Century Spanish artist.
Similar to John Madden's Shakespeare in Love and Stephen Soderbergh's Kafka, the film creates a narrative to explain and explore the themes and motifs of Goya's progressing career. In response to some of the darker and macabre etchings of Francisco Goya's (Stellan Skarsgård) early career, the renewed Spanish Inquisition accuses his young muse Inés (Natalie Portman) of heresy and imprisons her for over fifteen years. Upon the Spain's fall to Napoleon's armies in the early Nineteenth Century, Inés is released but has lost control of her mental faculties and continually rants and raves about her daughter with a fallen priest (Javier Bardem) who was taken from her in prison. Feeling pity on his former inspiration, the now deaf Goya makes it his personal quest to reunite Inés with her teenage prostitute daughter Alicia (also Portman).
The film does an excellent job of creating a cohesive narrative
around many disparate elements present in Goya's works, such
as his fascinations with mental illness and moral torment,
realistic depictions of the Napoleonic Wars and insane asylums,
and his realistic and often subtlely critical portraits. This
is accomplished through a skillful interweaving of the lives
of three primary characters, though the main brunt of the titular "ghosts" seem
to belong not to Goya, but to Brother Lorenzo and Inés.
At times the tri-protagonist format draws the film too thin,
and its lack of focus is felt throughout. It might be accentuated by the fact that none of these normally stellar actors puts forth a performance which is either memorable or anywhere near their usual calliber.
Portman's
performance is by far the weakest element of the film, and
might be the nadir of her career. I
used to rank her among the most promising actresses of her
generation, but her last few roles have me reconsidering this
assessment. As
the tortured and maddened Inés, her snivelling and whimpering
is most effective at illiciting sympathy in the viewer for
himself at having to suffer through it, and her charicature
of insanity and deformity in the film's second half is insulting
even to me who suffers from neither condition. As Inés's
daughter Alicia, she is only slightly better and it seems she
is so only because she is asked to portray a flighty, spoiled
harlot with absolutely no depth. Feel free to draw your own
conclusions from this observation.
The realistic and often troubling depictions of the medievel
practices carried out by the Spanish Inqisition and detailed
recreation of such intricate processes as making an etching
more than maintained my interest despite the lackluster performances.
I learned, for example, that a painter would charge more money
if a portrait were to contain hands, as they were more difficult
to recreate than other features. More importantly, I was made
aware of the extent to which the Inquisition continued long after
the Dark Ages with which it is generally associated, running
into the early eighteen-hundreds. If anything, these subtle
lessons built into many of the film's elements and the feeling
of historical authenticity were some of Goya's
Ghosts's biggest successes. This is what a costume
drama should be—more drama, less costumes.
For fans of Goya's enigmatic work, this film is a must see. Anyone
who has become a recent fan of Bardem for his acclaimed role
in No Country For Old Men might be disappointed, as
will anyone who might see it just for Natalie Portman (though
the naked torture scenes are sort of nice, body double and all). I
fall into the former category, having been an admirer of his
anachronistically dark paintings for years, and I was quite entertained
and engrossed by the movie overall.
-Mark
Moreland
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All contents ©
2004-2007 Thoughtsonfilm.com |
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Director:
Milos
Forman
Writer: Milos
Forman & Jean-Claude Carrière
Starring: Javier,
Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, Randy Quaid, Blanca
Portillo, Michael Lonsdale, José Luis
Gómez,
Mabel Rivera
Distributor: Samuel
Goldwyn Films
Runtime: 113
min
Rating: R
Release Date: July
20, 2007
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