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July 20, 2007 - Despite Milos Forman's recent comments refuting any intentional references to current hot-button issues, it's almost impossible to see much of Goya's Ghosts without thinking of the political turmoil in America and abroad. Forman, a polish director whose personal history is interwoven with historical benchmarks (his parents died in Auschwitz during World War II) and whose filmography is leavened with provocative material (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, The People vs. Larry Flynt), is nothing if not a filmmaker with his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture.
But what's most remarkable about Goya's Ghosts is not its commentary on issues of immediate (much less historic) significance. Rather, it's that Forman manages to reduce them to their most human, in the process bridging the arm's length distance between filmmaker and audience and creating a work of art that is both socially relevant and emotionally moving.
The film stars Javier Bardem (The Sea Inside) as Brother Lorenzo, a priest who vows to restore the power and authority of the church by bringing back the hardline values of his predecessors. His method, he reveals, is to put subjects "to the question" -- a euphemism for torture -- in order to force them to confess their sins and repent their transgressions. But when Ines (Natalie Portman), one of the muses of venerated artist Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgard), is mistakenly apprehended for practicing Judaism, her family appeals to Goya and then to Lorenzo for her release. When Lorenzo refuses, Ines' father Tomas (Jose Luis Gomez) puts the priest himself "to the question," coinciding with a revolution (both physical and ideological) that reverberates for decades to come in the characters' lives.
There are not a lot of scenes these days that qualify as truly haunting -- generally they're passingly disturbing or plainly disgusting -- but putting Lorenzo "to the question" easily ranks as one of the more amazing moments in recent movie history. It works not only because it renders the more literal-minded arguments for or against torture completely moot, but it demonstrates how a person will say anything they're told if subjected to the same kind of duress. Forman shoots the scene without pretense or melodrama, instead allowing the natural momentum of Lorenzo's assault (and subsequent acquiescence to Tomas' request) to drive home its emotional, intellectual and yes, political points.
That, predictably, exemplifies the work of a true cinematic master as opposed to any joker with a movie camera. Forman's films are replete with gorgeous set design, breathtaking cinematography and amazingly detailed style, but just as often they are sparse, simple and to the point: It doesn't matter if you can make someone or some thing look beautiful if you can't evoke deeper meaning from the shot. In Goya's Ghosts, Forman makes Portman look her absolute worst -- broken-jawed, jaundiced and decrepit -- not to give the actress her "Oscar opportunity" or to juxtapose Portman's beauty with the wizardry of movie make-up, but to condemn the kind of blind ideological advocacy to which Lorenzo and his colleagues subscribe.
Naturally, however, the performances are all top-notch -- Oscar-worthy, in fact. Portman lays herself bare as Ines, a young woman who pays for her unfortunate distaste for pork with 15 years of imprisonment, and embraces the (literal) uglier moments with fragile conviction. Meanwhile as Goya, Skarsgard imbues what amounts to a spectator's role in this tale as the film's interrogator, asking questions on behalf of the audience in order to clarify the personal and political developments that take place over the decades the film chronicles. And finally, Bardem turns in another reliably complex performance as Lorenzo, a man whose allegiance lies with those in power; his evolution from deferential priest to emboldened aristocrat is one that might seem schizophrenic in another actor's hands, but Bardem makes the transformation not only seem believable but understandable.
Overall, the film's only flaw is its ultimate reason for existence -- namely, to highlight the hypocrisy and eventual uselessness of adhering to concrete philosophies or political points of view. In choosing to take an outsider's stance on this volatile time in history, Forman occasionally leaves some of the characters adrift in events not only beyond their control but their impact; Portman's Ines, for example, desperately yearns for human contact following her imprisonment, but the film succumbs to the scope of the events it documents and sort of "forgets" to provide a sense of closure to her story. This again feels more like a byproduct of the film's central theme -- that human connection is essentially destroyed when we choose (or are forced) to adhere to a single or exclusive way of thinking -- but it leaves the end of the film emotionally emptier than its set-up suggests.
But in the end Goya's Ghosts is a far riskier and more provocative film than others released this summer, less because it targets relevant issues than the fact it refuses to take a stance on them on one side or the other. In Forman's view, simply raising the notion that one can be politically oblivious or indifferent is a revolutionary act precisely because we live in a world where the only way many people function is by drawing lines and making arbitrary distinctions between us and them. Goya's Ghosts reminds us of the scary truth that it's all a matter of time and perspective that determines which group one falls into, but thankfully Forman puts the really tough questions to them -- the characters -- and then leaves it to us -- the audience -- to figure out the considerably less painful, but equally difficult answers.
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Though it has been said that "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition," the reality of the matter was that for centuries, life in Spain was lived on the edge of a knife, where one wrong word or action could bring an innocent victim before an ecclesiastical court. Goya's Ghosts, the latest film from respected director Milos Forman, looks at the waning years of the Inquisition and its interaction with painter Francisco Goya and two fictional characters. The movie is uneven in the extreme, to the extent that it feels like two imperfectly wed pictures. The first, while not extraordinary, at least contains some interesting ideas. The second borders on embarrassing: an overblown melodrama complete with coincidence building upon coincidence and plot threads that are left unresolved.
It's hard to believe that this is the product of the filmmaker whose career apexes included One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. As in the latter film, Goya's Ghosts takes Forman into costume drama territory and allows him to explore the life and work of an artist. However, despite the title, this story isn't really about Goya. He's an observer. We are provided with a couple of lively scenes depicting him at work, but they're secondary to what's going on. Goya is never developed as a character and we never see his most famous works (the two Maja paintings) or the controversy surrounding them. He's here so Forman can have an historical figure interact with two make believe creations. This wouldn't be bad if either of them was more fully developed than Goya. Alas, they're just as flat and ultimately uninteresting.
The film opens in the late 1780s. The Brothers of the Inquisition, concerned that they have been too lenient on heretics in recent years (not enough burnings), have allowed one of their number, Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem), to turn up the heat. He does so with relish. Caught in his web is young Ines Bilbatua (Natalie Portman), who is seen refusing pork at dinner in a tavern. She is brought in and tortured on suspicion of practicing Jewish rites. Goya (Stellan Skarsgๅrd) becomes involved because he knows and has painted both Lorenzo and Ines. Ines' father asks him to mediate, but a cordial dinner turns into something darker that will change Lorenzo and Ines' futures.
For roughly its first hour, Goya's Ghosts manages to hold the viewer's attention. The Inquisition process and how it entraps Ines is interesting and there's an undeniable fascination associated with the "solution" arrived at by Ines' father (although it seems more than a trifle unrealistic). The torture scenes are harrowing without making the viewer feel voyeuristic or complicit. And there are hints of development in Lorenzo's character as circumstances shake his beliefs. Then comes the halfway point and the dreaded "15 years later" caption. After that, Goya's Ghosts falls apart completely.
This may well go down as the worst performance Bardem has ever given. He is largely unconvincing as his acting veers wildly from wooden to overwrought. Natalie Portman, despite playing two roles, isn't much better. She's a little more convincing as a woman with bad teeth in her mid-thirties than as a 14-year old prostitute. Her best scenes, sadly, are those when she's being tortured. Stellan Skarsgๅrd doesn't have a lot to do beyond providing a sounding board for other characters (ironic, because Goya is deaf) and work on the occasional painting. Then there's the strange case of Randy Quaid (of all people) playing King Carlos IV. Perhaps what's more surprising than Quaid's participation is that he isn't appreciably worse than he co-stars. (He really doesn't do much other than wear a wig and play the violin badly.)
The film isn't quite bad enough that it can be appreciated on that level. The costumes and set design are top notch and there are occasional scenes that hit the mark, although not nearly enough of them to justify the price of admission. On the whole, Goya's Ghosts feels like a missed opportunity. It's hard to figure out how a film with so much going for it (Forman, Bardem, Portman, Skarsgๅrd, and producer Saul Zaentz) could fail so miserably. But it proves that an idea isn't enough - there has to be a good script to go along with it, and that's one thing Goya's Ghosts does not have in its favor. There's little doubt this movie's theatrical apparition will be fleeting as it passes on to its next life in video stores.
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