Director: Carlos Saura
Cast: Francisco Rabal, Eulalia Ramon, Dafne Fernandez, Maribel.
Language: Spanish, with English subtitles
Anyone who wanders into Carlos Saura's "Goya in Bordeaux" without knowing something about the eminent Spanish painter Francisco Goya is bound to be a bit perplexed by this sumptuous movie biography, because it assumes considerable knowledge of his life and times.But, with even a little of the familiarity it demands, the movie is something special: a staggeringly beautiful excursion into the sensibility of an artist whose disillusionment with mankind, dark subject matter and break with artistic traditions made him the first truly modern painter.
It takes place in 1828, as Goya (Francisco Rabal) is 82 and near death, living with the last of his lovers (Eulalia Ramon) and their young daughter (Dafne Fernandez) in Bordeaux, France -- in pleasant financial circumstances but in bitter exile from the Spanish regime that he loathes.Bedridden and deaf since the age of 45, Goya spends the first part of the movie walking the nearby streets, refusing to take his medicine, bantering with his daughter, occasionally drinking with fellow liberal Spanish exiles and painting the bizarre, grotesque paintings of his later style on every bare wall of the house.
Gradually, however, the film begins to dwell on Goya's interior life. Soon, he's wandering through his past, often in dialogue with his younger self; and we follow his artistic development, his rising contempt for the human species and his great love affair with the Duchess .
The film gets increasingly surreal, often using painted theatrical backgrounds in flashbacks and re-creating some of Goya's most famous paintings -- his anti-war "Third of May, 1808," satiric "Family of Charles IV" and full-frontal "Nude Maja" -- in an explosion of color, pulsating music and stylized .
Another highlight of the movie is the moving interpretations of his "Visions of War" series. The reenacted scenes of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain capture the essence of his pain for his countrymen as Goya’s role as witness to history.
The triumph of this movie belongs to the inspired collaboration of two of the greatest technicians in postwar movie history: French art director Pierre-Louis Thevenet ("El Cid," "Patton," "The Fall of the Roman Empire") and Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro ("Dick Tracy," "The Last Emperor," "Apocalypse Now")
With Goya in Bordeaux, Saura has a crafted an exquisite movie where the art of biography becomes art itself.
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