Art of Darkness

The Spanish Inquisition targets Goya and his subjects in Milos Forman's biopic.

by Cindy Fuchs

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: Goya portrait subject Inés (Natalie Portman) rears her baby in prison. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Observing the grim new world of 1792, the Spanish Inquisitors are upset. For one thing, the latest etchings by one Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgård), royal portraitist, are scandalous. Worse, they're available for purchase everywhere, from Rome to Mexico. "This is how the world sees us!" they moan. What to do? What to do?

And then, a solution, brought by Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem) with smarmy aplomb. The images are disturbing, but they reveal the "true face of our world," he argues, not merely offenses by "an agent of the darkest powers." The work makes clear the urgency of their mission: Men of God must return their craven brethren to "the old ways."

Following this odious introduction, Goya's Ghosts sets about its business with an odd, even glib series of plot turns, such that Goya becomes something like a Forrest Gump for his time, observing with horror the devastations wreaked by the church and a couple of states. Such reference to current conservativism and rabid democracy-spreading extends throughout Milos Forman's film. Consider the Inquisition's primary device of putting suspected heretics (Jews, for instance) "to the Question," torturing them until they confess to anything. When Goya portrait subject Inés (Natalie Portman) is snatched from her wealthy father's home and accused of refusing to eat pork, she's stunned. Stripped naked and hung from her arms, she's soon cast into the mucky bowels of prison.

Inés suffers decades of torment, alleviated only by occasional visits from Lorenzo, whose gentle touch comes with heavy breathing (and produces a child he denies). Outside, Goya continues to paint it as he sees it, from the beady eyes of Queen María Luisa (Blanca Portillo) to the Inquisition's looming shadows, his resilience speaking to the power of art and the truth of one man's vision.

The excesses of authority � corruption, greed, cruelty, vanity � were, of course, a favorite subject for Goya. And if the movie doesn't take up his distinctive visual style, it does embrace his broad satire. Its targets are cartoonish, its attacks ferocious. And its most visible victim is pure of heart: When at last Inés is released, Goya makes it his business to find her daughter, Alicia, also played by Portman and working as a scarily mascara-ed whore in the local park.

The artist's persistent efforts to restore his muse to sanity suggests that he, too, is caught up in folly. But unlike the self-righteous church officials, he comprehends justice. When he loses his hearing and must make his diplomatic rounds with an interpreter (Wael Al Moubayed), Goya's Ghosts underscores both the need for communication and its elusiveness. Heavy-handed and bizarre more often than not, the film gets its own joke � more than can be said for the politicians it skewers.

(c_fuchs@citypaper.net)

GOYA'S GHOSTS | Directed by Milos forman | A Samuel Goldwyn Films release