Goya's Ghosts (2006)
Country: SP
Technical: Technicolor 114m
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, Randy Quaid, Michael Lonsdale
Synopsis:
An ambitious friar of the Inquisition uses Goya's exposure of the depravity of the world through his lithographs as a pretext for arguing for a return to the old methods of 'the Question', and this at the close of the Age of Enlightenment. Before long he is sidetracked by his interest in a young girl imprisoned and tortured by the very laws he helped revive. The Napoleonic invasion some years later brings about a reversal of policy, though not of fortune for the poor wretch and her family. All of which is witnessed and to some extent altered by the intervention of the artist himself.
Review:
A curiosity, neither historical horror story nor artistic biopic but, something in the manner of Quills, an attempt to combine the two. It doesn't quite achieve that film's focus and structure, partly due to its jumping about in time, partly to its pallid artist/narrator. Bardem has far more charisma and ought to have been cast as Goya, instead of as this pantomime tartuffe he plays, and Lonsdale's Grand Inquisitor and the Emperor Joseph-lookalike kings merely enhance the air of revue-like eclecticism. The film is equally uneven in tone: early scenes of torture and revenge have a Shakespearean directness but the victim's later derangement and picaresque bad luck estrange our sympathy and the film ends with a Ken Russell extravaganza involving all the surviving principal characters with their roles ironically changed, in one case necessitating a massive personality overhaul. Production values are high enough.
Country: SP
Technical: Technicolor 114m
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, Randy Quaid, Michael Lonsdale
Synopsis:
An ambitious friar of the Inquisition uses Goya's exposure of the depravity of the world through his lithographs as a pretext for arguing for a return to the old methods of 'the Question', and this at the close of the Age of Enlightenment. Before long he is sidetracked by his interest in a young girl imprisoned and tortured by the very laws he helped revive. The Napoleonic invasion some years later brings about a reversal of policy, though not of fortune for the poor wretch and her family. All of which is witnessed and to some extent altered by the intervention of the artist himself.
Review:
A curiosity, neither historical horror story nor artistic biopic but, something in the manner of Quills, an attempt to combine the two. It doesn't quite achieve that film's focus and structure, partly due to its jumping about in time, partly to its pallid artist/narrator. Bardem has far more charisma and ought to have been cast as Goya, instead of as this pantomime tartuffe he plays, and Lonsdale's Grand Inquisitor and the Emperor Joseph-lookalike kings merely enhance the air of revue-like eclecticism. The film is equally uneven in tone: early scenes of torture and revenge have a Shakespearean directness but the victim's later derangement and picaresque bad luck estrange our sympathy and the film ends with a Ken Russell extravaganza involving all the surviving principal characters with their roles ironically changed, in one case necessitating a massive personality overhaul. Production values are high enough.
Country: SP
Technical: Technicolor 114m
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Javier Bardem, Natalie Portman, Stellan Skarsgård, Randy Quaid, Michael Lonsdale
Synopsis:
An ambitious friar of the Inquisition uses Goya's exposure of the depravity of the world through his lithographs as a pretext for arguing for a return to the old methods of 'the Question', and this at the close of the Age of Enlightenment. Before long he is sidetracked by his interest in a young girl imprisoned and tortured by the very laws he helped revive. The Napoleonic invasion some years later brings about a reversal of policy, though not of fortune for the poor wretch and her family. All of which is witnessed and to some extent altered by the intervention of the artist himself.
Review:
A curiosity, neither historical horror story nor artistic biopic but, something in the manner of Quills, an attempt to combine the two. It doesn't quite achieve that film's focus and structure, partly due to its jumping about in time, partly to its pallid artist/narrator. Bardem has far more charisma and ought to have been cast as Goya, instead of as this pantomime tartuffe he plays, and Lonsdale's Grand Inquisitor and the Emperor Joseph-lookalike kings merely enhance the air of revue-like eclecticism. The film is equally uneven in tone: early scenes of torture and revenge have a Shakespearean directness but the victim's later derangement and picaresque bad luck estrange our sympathy and the film ends with a Ken Russell extravaganza involving all the surviving principal characters with their roles ironically changed, in one case necessitating a massive personality overhaul. Production values are high enough.