Present At The Creation-The French Revolution Comes To Spain-Natasha Portman’s “Goya’s Ghosts” (2006)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Bradley Fox, Junior

[As of this post under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Peter Markin was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

Goya’s Ghosts, starring Natasha Portman as Inez and Alicia, Javier Bardem as Lorenzo, Stellan Skargard as Goya, a Spanish production done in English, 2006)

[I find it ironic that one of the first assignments that new site administrator Greg Green has handed out deals with the turmoil of the French Revolution through the prism of the famous Spanish artist Francisco Goya which roiled through Spain during the height of the revolution in France and later during various Napoleonic conquests including Spain. Sometimes apparently, and this may have been Greg Green’s point in assigning the review life mirrors art as in the case of Lorenzo, the Spanish priest turned exiled partisan of the French Revolution and Napoleonic agent during the French occupation in the early 1800s before his downfall at Waterloo.

Seemingly a parallel example exists between Lorenzo’s topsy-turvy career and fate and that of the previous site administrator Peter Markin, who not so coincidentally was a good friend of my father Bradley, Senior and who has recently retired from that position after a vote of “no confidence” by the writers. The main reason given was Peter’s obsessive tilting of the coverage of subjects in this space toward events from the turbulent 1960s when most of the older writers came of age exemplified by the over-the-top coverage of the Summer of Love, 1967 he ordered the writers, young and old, familiar with the period or not, to cover. There has been, and here the parallel with Francisco who would go to his execution under the Inquisition once the French were defeated and swept out of Spain by the British with the aid of Spanish guerillas, a persistent rumor that Peter was purged and that the retirement ploy was just that a cover for the more aggressive removal mainly through the efforts of the younger writers which in the interest of transparency included me. So maybe Greg Green is trying to make a cautionary tale out of using this film plot as a review. I will try to track this down as I get more information by if you heard that one Peter Paul Markin has fallen under the wheels of a modern day Inquisition don’t be surprised. Don’t be surprised at all.]

*******

Artists, artist like the title’s Goya sometimes have the uncanny sense to be at the right place at the right time-at least the plot of this little gem of Spanish production film would indicate that. He lived and worked in the time of the French Revolution which was bringing a serious breathe of fresh air to feudal remnant Europe with the overthrown of the monarchy and of the attempt to bring the new democratic forms to the rest of the continent-including Spain which is where that revolution intersects with what Goya was observing and painting. In a sense Goya is all over the place in his work from the court painter to the royal family to the painter of the horrific effects of war on civilians and soldiers alike to the famous, or infamous if you like, painting of the Maja, the naked Maja which may or may not have scandalized European sensibilities. That is the subtext to the plot here where a Spanish priest, played by Javier Bardem, and Goya, played by Stellem Skargard, intersect through a rich merchant’s daughter model, played by Natalie Portman, whom Goya used and who inflamed the priest to lustful and criminal desire.  

Spain was, and maybe still is, a tough dollar place to be a dissenter, dissenter mainly being anything but a Roman Catholic and a hardened monarchist (and possibly a closet Francoist fascist if the recent struggle for the legitimate right to independent statehood of the Catalan peoples is any indication). Spain after all was the land of Inquisition which did not take kindly to any dissenters and had the means (torture and the rack, ultimately the auto de fe and the stake) That is where the action in this film starts (so the faint-hearted should push the stop button now). Lorenzo is the main prosecutor for the tribunals always looking for victims via his extensive stoolie spy network and he finds one in the person of the lusted after Inez. She goes into the dock after being tortured for her confession and before long Lorenzo has had his way with her. That way with her leading to her bearing his child. Eventually Inez get out of the slammer but the place took a lot out of her, left her mentally damaged.

Meanwhile the Church has no place for Lorenzo who is now considered an albatross around its neck and he gets out of Spain by hook or by crook landing in France. The scene then shifts back to Spain some fifteen years later. Like a lot of hard-boiled men who seek the main chance he became a senior bureaucrat in Napoleon’s administration of Spain after its conquest. Such men changing allegiance as easily as changing their shirts. Inez has seen better days but Lorenzo is still interested in finding his daughter. That search is interrupted by the British invasion which finds Lorenzo unsuccessfully fleeing but being caught and once the old order is reestablished the Inquisition in reinstated as well. Live by the sword die by the sword Lorenzo is condemned and in a defiant and honorable finish refuses to recant before he is executed.

What about Goya who after all is the hook for anybody with artistic sensibilities to have even bothered to watch this rather dragged out epic. He hovers over the scene doing his sketches and plotting his painting while trying to help Inez as best he could. But this film is mainly about Lorenzo and that is really the problem for me since we all know every revolutionary period brings certain figures from the old regime with them-after the masses have brought the changes and have fallen back exhausted. The French and Russian revolutions were full of such men who landed on their feet- for a time. Not enough Goya here to make this one move off dead center.