Goya In Bordeaux

Carlos Saura
1999

Carlos Saura sketches the waning days of artistic heavyweight Francisco Goya in an overly theatrical and florid effort that seems more suited to the stage than screen. Hoary old film veteran Francisco Rabal plays the aging artist, and while he adequately conveys all the orneriness of old age and the melancholy longing of exile, his passion and vitality eclipse any sense of ill health or physical degradation. Vittorio Storaro's photography is rich with wide swathes of artificial color and many scenes takes on the quality of stage lighting, which certainly suits the stage-like sets, and high volume of performative elements. This begs the question as to why film was the chosen medium for this project to begin with. Saura's impulse is more theatric than cinematic and even his large scale tableaux vivants of Goya's works (of which there are surprisingly few) maintain the the artist's stylistic broad strokes - the grand gestures required of the stage as opposed to the subtlety picked up by a camera's lens. The film is an aesthetically puzzling, and emotionally middling experience - a poor tribute to the intensity of Goya's art.