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Moriarty Reviews GOYA’S GHOSTS!
Capone, I want some of what you’ve been smokin’, brother. Because Milos Forman may well have made many great movies in the past, and he may well make great movies in the future, but GOYA’S GHOSTS ain’t one of them. Not remotely.
I have to say... I chewed on this film for days after watching it. It’s not a film to discount or just dismiss, certainly. Milos Forman obviously had a vision he was working to satisfy here, and the script he cowrote with Jean-Claude Carniere is literate and adult. I don’t think it’s a lousy movie. But I’ll be damned if I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s a mess in some fascinating ways. The movie’s got about a dozen ambitions, and part of the problem is that it never really nails any one idea completely. It’s too scattered thematically.
This film really helped crystallize something that I’ve been debating as a viewer. Natalie Portman is, I’m sorry to say, terrible in this film. Terrible. It’s not even a matter of one scene or one choice or any single thing she does wrong. It’s just not a role she is able to convincingly inhabit. From the moment she appears as Ines, a part-time model for the painter Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgard), she is playing an empty space, a thing to be projected onto. Part of the reason she’s terrible is because of what she was asked to play, of course, but I also think that Portman is an actress who requires a very sure directorial vision if she’s going to work well in a film. You have to know exactly what you want out of her, and you’d better be pretty sure ahead of time that it’s in her range. When she’s out of her comfort zone, she’s first-year drama student bad, like in the second role she plays in this movie, the whore Alicia. It’s laughable. Part of the problem is when directors think they’re going to wring some sort of erotic heat out of Portman... she ain’t got none. That’s just a fact. She’s like Nicole Kidman that way. Portman’s a beautiful girl, and she’s appealing in a clean-scrubbed sweet sort of way. When directors play to that particular strength of hers, like in BEAUTIFUL GIRLS or GARDEN STATE, she can be compelling. But I don’t think she’s got the range or the experience as a performer to really vanish into a role, and she almost completely derails this movie with her work.
Basically, it’s an Inquisition-era film about a girl who catches the eye of the repulsive Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem), who uses the flimsiest excuse possible to have her arrested, tried for heresy, and thrown into a deep, dark dungeon where he’s free to rape her whenever he likes.
So, yeah, it’s a comedy.
I think one of the things that really rubbed me the wrong way here is how desperately Forman wants to make sure you understand that history most likely smelled bad, and the film is very tactile at underlining the moral as well as literal filth that defined the era. And, yes, I know that’s how the era probably was, but there’s a difference between striving for accuracy and wallowing in something. If this was a smarter script or if it actually knew what it was trying to say, I don’t think I’d mind as much, but that seems to be all there is to it.
The notion of the film being a scathing indictment of the hypocrisy of the Inquisition strikes me as a big bag of “duh.” I’m not sure what it was that set Forman and his co-writer Jean-Claude Carriere off, but there had to be other ways into this material. Goya is almost peripheral to the action. It’s Brother Lorenzo who has the journey in this film. After he abducts and abuses Ines (Portman) in the name of the church, her family tortures him to prove that under duress, anyone will confess to anything. And sure enough, he confesses to being a pig. That event ruins his standing in the Church, which believes that “The Question” (the name of the torture that Ines endures) is absolute and incorruptible. Brother Lorenzo’s failure to stand up to The Question makes him a dangerous man. He is forced to run for his life, leaving Spain completely. He ends up embroiled in the French Revolution, and when he returns, he’s a different kind of inquisitioner. He goes after the exact men he used to serve alongside in the Church, living it up at the same time. It’s during his return to Spain that he meets his own daughter (also played by Portman wearing the most hilarious set of false teeth this side of Grandpa Simpson), which sets the last act of this would-be tragedy into motion.
Ultimately, I found GOYA’S GHOSTS depressing because it seems to me to be a colossal waste of a whole lot of talent. There are few things that bum me out more in a theater than seeing people I know are capable of greatness turn out twaddle of this magnitude. I know this film’s barely getting a release here, but on the off chance any of the names involved might seduce you into the theater, do yourself a favor and track down some other small, hopefully worthy film and give that one your $10. This one doesn’t deserve it at all.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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She fantastically beautiful. But damn, if she carries about as much sex appeal as a door knob.
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SUK IT
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fook me running
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There's a lot in this film. As for Goya not being the subject - well, yes. Hence the title: Goya's Ghosts. Not Goya.
Portman was, by and large, better than I expected. She played the cypher, pushed around, until circumstances created tragedy that defined her. -
:( :( :(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073000191.html[/url]
You will be missed, good sir. My thoughts and condolences go out to his family, friends, and lovers of cinema everywhere. -
... I've seen you call it a "masterpiece." I think that sets the bar rather low. This is far from a masterpiece. And I get the title... I still think the film is confused and ham-handed, through and through.
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Please, hurry up and do it while we still care!
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Bergman is dead. Holy Christ. The great shining light in the sky has finally winked out. All of the Old Gods are finally dead. Kurosawa, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, Kieslowski, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Leone, Truffaut. Farewell, Ingmar. You did more for my love of cinema and my development as a human being than anyone else. Thanks for being the greatest cinematic genius of the 20th century. Particularly for Cries and Whispers, surely your purest and most perfect film.
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is a piece of shit, no matter how you look at it.
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I'm pretty sure the main part of the Spanish Inquisition was over roughly a century before Goya (1746-1828) and the French Revolution (1789 onwards). Yeah, the Inquisition was still around in a formal sense, but all the stuff we commonly associate with the Inquisition - burning at the stake, torture, etc - had declined considerably by the late 18th century. So not only does Goya's Ghosts sound like a bad movie, it smacks of lazy history too.
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only film i believed in her is the Professional. she's just a vacant actress. so vacant it ovepowers her beauty. Capone is a plant.
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I may still watch it as I am a Skargard and Foreman fan. Oh, well!
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Even crap films can be worth fast forwarding through if they have naked Natalie Portman.
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you are pretty much wrong. the events in the movie about the inquisition and burning and all actually took place. it was their latest hits truth to be told, but it happened.
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No actor should be harshly judged for a performance they give under the (non)direction of George Lucas. Both Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman were unfairly criticized for the prequels, especially in light of how they had the hardest parts to pull off, and yet got the least to work with via the script and direction.
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Face it, she is attractive, but a terrible actress. Horrible in Star Wars (she was Jar-Jar bad), Garden State she was meh, totally f'ed up V for Vendetta, actually every part that she has had since the Professional has been underwhelming at best. Going to Harvard was a good choice, stick to Psychology sweetheart!
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Liam Neeson, Pernilla August, Ian McDiarmid, Ewan McGregor and (in ROTS, anyway) Hayden Christensen all gave perfectly fine SW performances. Setting aside Samuel L. Jackson--who was really an ancillary character--only Portman was consistently awful. I don't care if Lucas isn't an actor's director...there is NO excuse for her performance in AOTC. You're telling me THAT was the mother of Leia Organa?
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Portman sucks? Um, yeah.
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But Forman is very enamored with Goya and the inquisition and I think that, sometimes, that can work against a director. When you love your subject too much things like casting become immaterial or secondary to your larger vision.
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....calm down.....
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according to wikipedia, the last public auto da fe took place in 1690. Goya's Ghosts seems to be set about a century after that.
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If you're telling the truth, you're a prick. If you're not telling the truth, you're still a prick. Oh, and "i kick tits" is a horrible username, but I'll forgive you since you're probably thirteen and don't know better.
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It might be true that they both do better work with strong direction, but overall I'd say that Kidman is a much better actress. Portman's acting style is incredibly self concious. Same goes for Scarlett Johanssen.
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if you trust wikipedia, that is what you will get. After the defeat of France invasion, Inquisition returned for short time, chasing masons and French revolution supoorters, til it was definitely abolished in 1834. The last execution in Europe took place in 1826, July 26th (can´t remember where exactly took place). Guess you were not expectin the spanish inquisition.
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You speak well of the other prominent prequel actors, but I'm sure you realize that all of them (to varying degrees) received the same criticisms as Portman for lifeless, stilted, and stiff acting. Christensen and Portman took the most heat, but that's no surprise considering they had the heaviest dramatic weights to lift yet were given the least to work with by Lucas. The reason I don't blame Portman, or any of the others for that matter, but especially Portman, is because her character was ill-conceived and poorly written from the get-go. (A 14 year old ruler? Who would elect a child to govern them?) With the much maligned romance, Lucas gave us zero insight as to why she'd fall in love with anakin. Even still, I think that the acting of Portman and Christensen in the love scenes was actually fine...its the dialogue that completely undermines them. I think if one watched it with the dialogue muted, one would find it much more convincing, because one wouldn't have Lucas' bizarre and unnatural words getting in the way. Still I admit that it wasn't Oscar-worthy acting, but I doubt anyone could have done much better with what they had to work with in Lucas' actor-unfriendly directing style and his poorly written scripts. Had Lucas gotten out of the way like he did for Empire Strikes Back, then the prequel love story would have been a strength instead of a source of ridicule. And when the common criticims of the prequel actors for stiff acting are hardly ever leveled at them for other roles, then to the extent that the criticisms are justified that makes me point the finger at Lucas. Richard Roeper summed it up nicely when he said that some directors are known for taking mediocre actors and getting great performances out of them, while Lucas takes great actors and gets mediocrity from them.
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