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Goya's Ghost.

It's another one of those movies that received sucky rotten tomato ratings, but is actually not bad. I was expecting something less, but got a bit more. The movie deals with the Inquisition, French Revolution, Napolean and those dark days of Spain. Francisco Goya was swept up in history.

Natalie Portman plays a senorita and a Goya model caught in the inquisition for a silly trumped up charge. Tortured to confessing she spends her life in jail. Goya as the court painter is brought in to help get her releas by her father. He's painitng a priest's portrait (Javier Bardem) so he has connections with the church. Bardem falls for her, but can not get her release. He ends up fathering her child, and gets in trouble with the church. You see he was also tortured to confess that he's a monkey by the father. He becomes a fugitive and flees to France. Fifteen years later he's back with Napolean at the fall of the Spanish King. Placed in charge of Spain he is now a secular person, but when the British come back to displace Napolean's puppet regime he gets his comeuppance at the hands of the church.

There was a lot of brutalitiy in this film. The church was brutal. Royalty was brutal. Spain is brutal. Amazing since it isn't so nowadays.

It was somewhat depressing, but it reminded me of seeing his paintings at the Prado especially his black period. They were a series of dark, dreadful paintings called hisBlack Paintings. Witches and devils in dark shades peered from the dark canvas. I liked them when I saw them.

3 of 5 stars.