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
