Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Painter Francisco Goya becomes involved with the Spanish Inquisition after his muse, Inés, is arrested by the church for heresy. Her family turns to him, hoping that his connection with fanatical Inquisitor Lorenzo, whom he is painting, can secure her release.
Goya's Ghosts is an ambitious but uneven historical drama from Milos Forman that spans decades of Spanish history. The plot is sprawling and loses focus — it begins as a sharp examination of Inquisition-era religious hypocrisy but drifts into a Napoleonic epic that never fully coheres. Acting is competent: Javier Bardem brings intensity to Lorenzo and Natalie Portman does creditable double duty, though neither role is among their career bests. Cinematography captures period atmosphere reasonably well but rarely transcends the functional. The premise — filtering Spanish history through Goya's eyes — is a genuinely interesting conceit, though its execution is too scattered to fully capitalize on it, landing it at average novelty. The ending is the film's weakest element: the resolution feels rushed and emotionally unsatisfying, failing to pay off the personal and historical threads it had been weaving.