Director Spotlight: Goya’s Ghost

The final film in our Milos Forman spotlight is 2006′s Goya’s Ghosts. In it Stellan Skarsgård plays Francisco Goya, whose art is viewed as controversial, with many gruesome images that raise ire among the leaders of the church.  Father Lorenzo, played by a soft spoken Javier Bardem, acts as an advocate in the church for Goya’s work.  He seeks to commission Goya to create artwork that invokes a more fearful image of God.  Natalie Portman plays, Ines, a naive, young woman who becomes the target of the inquisition after appearing in one of Goya’s paintings.  Unfortunately, she isn’t educated enough to help herself out of the situation and winds up the victim of unimaginable cruelty.  In a turn of events Ines’ family kidnaps and tortures Father Lorenzo in the fashion of the inquisitors in order to procure her release. The plan fails, and the story quickly veers in another direction as the French invade Spain, releasing all of the inquisitors’ prisoners.