martys-7 A psychological portrait of Goya in his last days, the film illuminates his art and complexities. An invocation of Goya's paintings and drawings in their hallucinatory themes and colors, we are presented with a stream of consciousness narrative in which the great and influential Spanish master reminisces about his past glories and failures, his joys and sorrows, his loves and loses, and the darkness and light that forged his work.This Carlos Saura's film is as visionary and evocative as Goya's art and should not be be missed by anyone who is interested in art, the creative process, and the conflicting forces in artists' lives.

user1684 The film opens with a dream sequence, Goya walking in pajamas at night in the streets of a French city, with couples people going about their business, it looks and feels like a Saturday night in the Spring.The rest of the movie is about the same, floating here and there with some great music and dance numbers to break up the dream like sequences.His conversations with his daughter are touching and a good way to brush up on one's Spanish.Most of the scenes take place at night. He favors the night because of the effect it has on his perception of the hues of the paint.If you are interested in art, or like to paint this is a great movie to watch especially in you are in bed and ready to fall asleep.Definitely a movie to watch at night.Enjoy.

ss3 The photography is admittedly fascinating as is the dance and music, but the movie is very talkey and with no sustaining plot it soon seems clautrophobic and dull. Occasionally their are scenes outside which comes as truly a breath of fresh air. True this is supposed to be about Goya dying, but there is little drama in that since it is a foregone conclusion.

Paul Creeden I do not know the price tag for this film, but my guess is that they could have used more dough. The Napoleonic Wars are hard to do on a budget. Tableau representations of Goya's works were charming. They went on too long and the acting added in was pure ham. The whole thing seemed a disjointed mess to me. I was reminded of Ken Russell's "The Music Lovers" in which Richard Chamberlain has a poetic delirium from typhus. Goya was obviously an accomplished political artist, yet the film portrays him as a narcissistic bumbler. As an American, I was impressed with all the overtly sentimental sexism and ageism at the heart of the movie. Old men obviously all dote and drool. Young granddaughters obviously grin and bear it. Wink. Wink. It was all too wholesome to be surreal and too surreal to be taken seriously as history. I had great hopes for it, but I was disappointed.