Goya's Ghosts (Milos Forman, 2007)

[Antoine Doinel]

Apparentally, we're treated to a nude Natalie Portman in this one, but alas, I don't have the measurements of her erect nipples at this time.

[miless]

but alas, I don't have the measurements of her erect nipples at this time.

DAMN!

[Andre Jurieu]

Apparentally, we're treated to a nude Natalie Portman in this one...

It's a body-double.

[Cinesimilitude]

Nice Jab.

I'm definitely seeing this for Portman, but not for her nips. I'm glad they are going with a body double, Saw a paparazzi pic back in the day that I wish I hadn't (and the hole gets deeper).

PS. Just watched the trailer, Looks excellent. Bardem and Skarsgaard are great actors, and I love Goya's paintings.

[miless]

(and the hole gets deeper).

???

[Cinesimilitude]

(and the hole gets deeper).

???

Go read "The Birds Remake!" thread. you'll understand.

[Polybius]

I wish Portman had Watts' casual attitude about nipple display.

[Lino]

Bardem should have played Goya.

[Lemmy Caution]

So has anyone seen this? What's the word?
It's not due out in the USofA until the summer, but has already been out in a number of European countries, beginning last November. The Dvd is around here, but I haven't gotten much of a feel for this film yet.

Should I just assume anything by Milos Forman is worthwhile?
Unfortunately I've still never seen his two early films released by Criterion. Though I have seen and enjoyed Black Peter.

[rs98762001]

Should I just assume anything by Milos Forman is worthwhile?
Unfortunately I've still never seen his two early films released by Criterion. Though I have seen and enjoyed Black Peter.

All his Czech films are wonderful. AUDITION is a raw beauty, and is available in a nice disc from Second Run. LOVES OF A BLONDE is my favorite of his films, just a complete, poignant delight. Criterion has great versions of that, and the also-worthwhile FIREMAN'S BALL.

His first US film is probably the best one he's made over here to date - TAKING OFF which, as far as I am aware, is STILL not available on DVD. Then of course his more famous, Oscar-heavy adaptations of CUCKOO'S NEST and AMADEUS - but Forman seemed to lose the light touch and gentle humanity of his early work as his career became more "significant" and "important" (i.e. pompous). In the last twenty years, only his LARRY FLYNT film has come close to recapturing past glories.

His autobiography, incidentally, is also well worth reading.

[MichaelB]

Don't forget his debut feature Black Peter, which is available in two DVDs - a legendarily appalling transfer on Facets that should be avoided like the plague, and a far superior Czech edition on Filmexport Home Video (Beaver comparison here).

The latter label also distributes Audition in a double bill with Jan Nemec's Diamonds of the Night. Although I'm a huge fan of Second Run in general, I have to favour this edition over theirs.

[soma]

A body double was used when Portman's nakedness is explicit on camera, but she still acts nude, albeit privates covered from view.

Apparently there were fully-naked striptease scenes filmed for Closer though, removed before release at Portman's request. Which makes me infinitely envious of Mike Nichols.

Might even use one of these fellas on this occasion =P~

[Cinesimilitude]

I've seen the portman "nude" scenes, and they are creepy. a torture scene has her hanging by her arms the way they would be if they started pulling up while she was cuffed from behind. her screams are three times as off-putting as they were in V for Vendetta. She is then taken advantage of by Bardem's priest, but all is covered. Her performance in these (what I assume to be) key scenes is quite raw, I'll definitely see it on DVD.

[Jem]

Trailer

IMDb

Stellan Skarsgård as Goya, excellent casting.
http://media.outnow.ch/Movies/Images/20 ... e.p/03.jpg

[Polybius]

Stellan in anything is generally excellent casting.

Not to obsess on Nat's body (she's nice and all, but her fans are an obsessive and rather creepy lot who, paradoxically, seem to groove on her overly chaste public image and get angry when you comment on her sexual appeal...or maybe I just hang out at some bad places online), but she's got kind of a big ass, especially for such a petite frame.

I'm not complaining, I rather like it, but I just felt it was noteworthy

[Jem]

hmm sexy

[Jeff]

I have an opportunity to attend a free screening of this tonight, but I think I'm going to pass. Has anyone here seen it?

[Svevan]

Saw this while I was in Portland for the weekend. The quality of the film is uneven, with some really great ideas about the interaction between art and reality (a cousin to Paprika, with its fiction/reality conversation) but they are mired by an expansive plot that is crammed into two hours of film.

At first I wanted to give credit to Forman for not making a film that so blatantly exploits the visuals of an artist by creating a narrative explanation for their existence, but as it turns out Forman uses many more Goya paintings as templates for his plot than I thought (I guess I don't know enough Goya). The fact that many of the standout moments in the film are really just Goya prints helps to explain why the narrative jumps around so much and feels so contrived. Girl With a Pearl Earring, a far from perfect artist biopic, does a better job copying and pasting Vermeer's masterpieces because the plot holds up (even though Colin Firth as "dark and mysterious" is retarded).

The most ludicrous part happens at the end

Spoiler

when all four major players, Bardem as Lorenzo, Sarsgaard as Goya, Portman as Inez, and Portman as Alicia, end up at the same execution. What's the point, other than to wrap the movie up?

Yet some parts really stand out, like Bardem's performance as Lorenzo and his descent from priest of the Holy Office to fugitive and his rise to leader in the French Revolution. Portman's character at first is poignant, but her connection to Lorenzo is melodramatic and hardly measures up to the terrible things Goya saw in his day. The film seems to be an attempt at recreating the terrors of the day as a way to understand where Goya's gruesome artwork came from, but with such a neat and tidy (albeit unhappy) story it fails: surely the power of Goya's artwork is the anonymity, that we see nameless French soldiers torturing a nameless guy on the street, whether he is guilty or not. The film captures this for a moment when Sarsgaard says "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood" over a montage of images of death. The whole film could have been like this, yet instead this movie is mired by a plot, which is the ball and chain for all artist biopics. Most great artists created vague narratives, if they had one at all. A narrative placed on top a great painting is just an extra layer of interpretation that confuses rather than clarifies. I much preferred Forman's (or really, Schaffer's) view of Mozart in Amadeus, where the music just seemed to come out of his body as if summoned. When that film adds biographical elements to Mozart's work, as when Salieri notes that Mozart was resurrecting his father in Don Giovanni, it isn't trite (and may in fact be true).

A great part of the film is when Sarsgaard gives an extended speech about the world he and Bardem occupy, and instead of watching his performance we see his many paintings and prints, as if they are pouring out of him like Mozart's music. The rest of the film is too banal, too specific, too tied to a plot to notice that it misses the point.