Review – Goya in Bordeaux

I should start by admitting that I dozed through part of this movie. But I think I got enough of the general gist of things to form an opinion about the overall quality of the work. Here we have Goya’s life retold through theatrically-staged flashbacks as the old guy slowly dies in exile in France. I liked the attempts to make the flashbacks resemble the artist’s work, especially when the filmmakers actually manage to pull it off. However, the production tends throughout to strongly resemble a stage play, giving it the distinct flavor of the movie Paul Schrader made many years ago about Yukio Mishima. In Schrader’s case the look-and-feel was justified, as his subject was – among other things – a playwright. But here I was hoping for something a little more painterly and a little less stagy. Mildly amusing