Milos Foreman's "Goya's Ghosts" significantly lowers the bar of the creative biography, a bar that Foreman himself had raised to unprecedented loftiness in "Amadeus." It's still the one film whose robe most aspire to touch, even fleetingly, before falling to the knees in abject worship.
Foreman refashioned the great Austrian composer into a charming, farting, lecherous buffoon touched by a divine gift, but in "Goya's Ghosts," Spanish court painter Francisco Goya has precious little of that irresistible magnetism. In fact, he's kinda boring — the type of guy who, at parties, tends to stand to one side with a napkin-wrapped drink, affable but ultimately invisible. Hi Goya, bye Goya.
What happened? Foreman has lost none of his skill in creating rich, beautiful imagery, and the story itself is dense and absorbing. We get to see a lot of Goya's satirical (often macabre) prints that show another side to the painter, best known for his detailed portraits of royalty and the twin "Maja" studies. All this, and yet "Goya's Ghosts" remains strangely inert and coldly distant — an amazing piece of rocket machinery that never really gets off the ground.