Milos Forman's first film in almost a decade 'œfeatures only peripherally the great Spanish painter' Francisco Goya, said Peter Rainer in The Christian Science Monitor. The artist, played blandly by Stellan Skarsgard, is mostly a bystander to the main story of Javier Bardem's Brother Lorenzo, an ardent torturer for the Inquisition who later becomes a lackey to Napoleon's totalitarian regime. Natalie Portman plays both a prisoner raped by Lorenzo and their illegitimate daughter. This is 'œthe kind of ambitious historical film that doesn't get made anymore.' Thank goodness for that, said Andrew O'Hehir in Salon.com. Back in 1984, Forman himself exploded the tired genre with Amadeus, a film that had style, wit, and an irresistible artistic genius at its center. Goya's Ghosts has none of those, nor leading actors with 'œthe mixture of theatrical respectability and movie-star cachet that Burton and Hepburn' provided in the costume drama's golden age. Still, Bardem's 'œgreat and terrifying performance' will stick with me, said Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly. As we follow Brother Lorenzo's tortured rationalizations for transferring allegiances from church to revolution, this shifty figure 'œemerges as the smilingly sinister epitome of the modern political machine.'
Rating: R
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