A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Goya's Ghosts

Date Viewed: 7/22/07

Details:

Javier Bardem

Natalie Portman

Stellan Skarsgård

Randy Quaid

Michael Lonsdale

José Luis Gómez

Director: Milos Forman

Score: +

The Review: It is 1792, and no one is safe from the clutches of the Spanish Inquisition.

The etchings of Francesco Goya, especially those from the period 1792 to 1814, are grotesque and disturbing: an indictment of the cruelties to the outcasts of society (the Caprichos series, published in 1799), and the cruelties of war (the Los desastres de la guerra series, published posthumously in 1863). Much of this depressing mood has been transferred to celluloid in Goya's Ghosts, which covers the 15-year historical window following the Caprichos. One of the ghosts of the title refers to Goya's (Skarsgard) conscience, and his inability to protect the daughter (Portman) of one of Madrid's nobles (Gomez) from the Spanish Inquisition.

This incarnation of the Inquisition is embodied by the character of Brother Lorenzo (Bardem), who -- besides his duplicitous support of Goya (against the questions arising from the Caprichos) because he's in the midst of sitting for a portrait -- also persuades grand inquisitor Father Gregorio (Lonsdale) to bring back more rigor to the Inquisition, to bring back "the question." (This is the euphemism of the time covering persistent inquiry while the person is being physically tortured.) But the answers given to "the question" will be limited only by the imagination of the inquisitor. Any film that works against the tragedy and insanity of the Inquisition has a powerful background (and a potential audience in me), and Ghosts adds interest through several characters and families about whom it is easy to care.

(By the way, the grand inquisitor may look familiar; you might recall him from The Name of the Rose, where he played a very similar character. The inquisition arises in many contexts!)

Skarsgard is very good as the deaf Goya, dealing with the politics of inquisitional and wartime Spain. It is an odd role for Portman, though, in part because she is given the unusual opportunity to play two characters, and in part because she "pulls a Theron" transformation (e.g., Monster) in the last segment of the film. Quaid's King Carlos has some very witty moments, but he's only on-screen for a pitifully short time.

There is a curious sidebar in which we see one possible reason by Hieronymous Bosch's bizarre masterpiece, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," was not donated to Napoleon's Parisian museums and stayed in Madrid for me to see it in the Prado.

(22-Jul-07)

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