Goya's Ghosts

Spain, 1792 and the artist Goya (Skarsgard) comes under fire from the dreaded Spanish Inquisition (he wasn't expecting them) because of his subversive etchings. When the Inquisition, headed up by the cold Brother Lorenzo (Bardem), arrests and tortures his muse Ines (Portman), she confesses to heresy. Her father Tomas (Jose Luis Gomez), a wealthy merchant, invites Lorenzo to dinner at his home and, under torture, makes Lorenzo confess that he is the offspring of an orangutan and a chimpanzee, thus proving that a person will confess to anything under torture. That should have been the movie - point made and all that - but Milos Forman (who co-wrote the script) spends another hour and a half sorting it all out. The movie skips forward 15 years to Napoleon's invasion of Spain and Lorenzo, seeing the error of his ways, is now a changed man, while the broken Ines, recently released from prison, carries with her a terrible secret. Although the title suggests something of a biopic, Goya himself is a marginal figure and has no place in the film even as an observer. The theme - the dangers of unlimited power - is also clumsily handled. The film looks beautiful and Forman, as you'd expect from the director of Amadeus, once again realises the era he's working in - but Goya's Ghosts is an opportunity missed.