Stills from Goya's Ghosts

By M&C Jun 24, 2007, 12:18 GMT

A still from Goya\'s Ghosts.

Latest stills from Goya's Ghosts.

GOYA’S GHOSTS starts off in Spain in 1792 and tells the story through the eyes of the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya of a group of people caught up in a time of political convulsion and historical change. The action takes place from the later years of the Spanish Inquisition through the invasion of Spain by Napoleon’s army to the ultimate defeat of the French and restoration of the Spanish monarchy by Wellington’s powerful invading army.

 JAVIER BARDEM is Brother Lorenzo, an enigmatic, cunning member of the Inquisition’s inner circle who becomes involved with Goya’s teenage muse, Ines (NATALIE PORTMAN), when she is falsely accused of heresy and sent to prison. STELLAN SKARSGARD plays Francisco Goya, the celebrated painter renowned for both his colorful court paintings and his grim depictions of the brutality of war and life in Spain.

 GOYA’S GHOSTS, a Xuxa Production S. L., in association with KanZaman Films is directed by Milos Forman and produced by Saul Zaentz from a screenplay by Forman and Jean-Claude Carriere (BIRTH). Paul Zaentz is executive producer. Co-producers are Denise O’Dell and Mark Albela.

Forman and Zaentz previously collaborated on the Academy Award winning films ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and AMADEUS. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST received nine Oscar nominations, winning five statuettes include Best Picture and Best Director. AMADEUS was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and received eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Forman’s most recent film is MAN ON THE MOON. He has also directed THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLINT, RAGTIME and HAIR, among other productions. Saul Zaentz’s most recently produced THE ENGLISH PATIENT swept the Academy Awards for 1996 with 12 nominations and nine Oscars.

Jean-Claude Carriere collaborated with Milos Forman on VALMONT and TAKING OFF. He is author of more than 100 screenplays including Luis Bunuel’s THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE and THAT OBJECT OF DESIRE.

Director of photography is Javier Aquirresarobe who won the 2005 Goya Award for THE SEA INSIDE. Academy Award winner Patrizia Von Brandenstein (Amadeus) is production designer. Her most recent film is ALL THE KING’S MEN, due for release September 2006. The costumes are designed by Academy Award winner Yvonne Blake (NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA) who received the 2005 Goya Award for THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY.
 
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:

The idea to make a film about the great Spanish painter Francisco de Goya and the Spanish Inquisition first occurred to Milos Forman more than 50 years ago when he was a student in Communist Czechoslovakia.

“It didn’t really start with Goya at all,” Forman recalls. “It started when I was in film school and read a book about the Spanish Inquisition and an incident in which someone had been falsely accused of a crime.

“I thought this could be the heart of a wonderful story.There were a great many parallels between the Communist society we lived under and the Spanish Inquisition. I knew, of course, a story like this could never be done in Czechoslovakia because of such similarities. So I forgot about it. For the time being.”

But good ideas don’t die even if they fade away temporarily. They endure in the recesses of the mind, and this idea was no exception.Thirty years later it resurfaced, not surprisingly in Madrid, where Forman and independent producer Saul Zaentz were promoting AMADEUS, their second Academy Award winning collaboration that followed nearly ten years after their first triumph, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.

“Milos and I were staying across the street from the Prado Museum in Madrid when he remarked to me he had never seen the famous Hieronymus Bosch painting Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the Prado’s greatest holdings,” Zaentz remembers.

“But the Prado holds many other masterpieces, including the greatest collection of Goya paintings, and we looked at those. We’d seen them, but never live, in person. They were marvelous. One struck us, the painting of a dog. When you see it reproduced in a book you imagine it must be movie-screen size because it’s so wonderfully done. In person you discover it’s not big at all, maybe a meter and a half, but you’re not disappointed. The dog is very touching and you carry the image with you.”

Goya fascinated Forman. “I was overwhelmed by his paintings and couldn’t stop thinking about him,” he says. “I was convinced Goya was the first modern painter. More than ever I wanted to make a picture about him.”

During the Prado visit Forman related to Zaentz the incident about the Inquisition he had read so many years before, and he discussed his idea of making a film that dealt with the Inquisition in combination with Goya.  Zaentz understood it could be a wonderful movie.

“But I told him it was necessary to come up with a story that could support the idea, a story we had both confidence in and were passionate about in order for us to move ahead,” the producer said. Forman agreed.

As time went by, producer and director continued to talk over the idea for the film, and even considered a particular writer to draft a screenplay. But, in fact, Forman had a favored collaborator in mind, the renowned screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, with whom both he and Zaentz had worked successfully in the past.

“Jean-Claude is like a spiritual brother to me,” the director says. 

Forman and Carriere first met forty years ago in 1966 at a film festival in Sorrento, Italy. By then Forman had directed several features, including BLACK PETER and LOVES OF A BLONDE, and Carriere had collaborated with the great Spanish director Luis Bunuel on the screenplay for DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID, and with Louis Malle on the script for VIVA MARIA.

Forman and Carriere stayed friends after Forman left Czechoslovakia, and throughout several collaborations (TAKING OFF, VALMONT). Over the years they were always in contact.

“Yes, I was intrigued by Milos’s idea – well I wouldn’t call it an idea – it was, rather, a desire to do a film not exactly about Goya, but about Spain during Goya’s time,” Carriere says. “And Goya would enter into the story naturally because it was the time period in which he lived, a turbulent period.

“This is a very interesting time frame. The end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th is probably one of the most important periods in European history because of the French Revolution and the advent of Napoleon. France was the center of Europe at the time and it’s interesting to see all the consequences of what was happening there, and how they affected Spain, especially once Napoleon invaded the country.

“Spain at the end of the 18th century was probably, despite a certain modernity, the most backwards nation in western Europe. It was Catholic, conservative, ruled by a monarchy whose King belonged to the same family as the French King. The works of the great 18th century philosophers and the Enlightenment had almost no influence there. The Inquisition was still in operation, still capable of inflicting terrible damage on the populace. Milos was fascinated by the era, and the Inquisition.”

“What was so attractive for me about this particular period,” Forman says, “was, with so many paradoxes and so many changes going on, it reflected the times I had lived through, first a democratic society, then the Nazi society, then the communists, then democratic again, and then the communists again and then democracy once more.

“And that’s very similar to what the situation was in Spain at the beginning of the 19th century. King Carlos represents the old guard when suddenly Napoleon invades and brings progress, the ideals and values of the French Revolution. But what is that? It reminded me of the time in my own life when the Soviets brought ‘liberty’ to Czechoslovakia.

“Instead of real liberation in Spain, Napoleon installs his brother on the Spanish throne until the British, under Wellington, invade, chase out the French and restore the repressive Spanish monarchy. Very interesting period.”

Carriere and Forman were convinced that Goya was the perfect figure though which to tell the story of those times. Goya was born long before the French Revolution and died long after.

“I don’t think Goya was politically involved consciously. He was just an incredible observer, like a journalist,” Forman says. “He was commenting, recording what he witnessed. As he says in the film, ‘I paint what I see’.”

Carriere says, “Goya painted the kings and queens of Spain, their children, the whole family, and was admitted inside the Royal Palace, also painting the people at court. But at the same time he knew about ordinary life. He walked the streets, went to the taverns and he did sketches and engravings, many of which, Los Caprichios and the Disasters of War are so famous, and rightly so. He even did a portrait of one of the Inquisitors, and also the brother of Napoleon who was installed on the Spanish throne, as well as ordinary citizens and soldiers. He understood the heart of everyone.”

In terms of the film they wanted to make, Forman, Zaentz and Carriere understood that a simple Goya bio-pic or a didactic depiction of the Inquisition would not work. What was wanted was a fresh approach, and the filmmakers continued to mull over the project, steeping themselves in the history of Spain, concentrating on the period, reading everything they could find on Goya and the Inquisition.

Forman and Carriere, who speaks Spanish and knows the country, even spent several weeks driving around the Spanish countryside, making a second trip with Saul Zaentz, trying to deepen their understanding of the country and its culture.

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