Goya's Ghosts

Starring: Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem

Release: 2006

From Andrei Rublev, audiences do not really get a coherent and accurate biography of the life of Russia"s most famous painter of icons, but, what they do get is a fairly honest sense of the nature and quality of life Medieval Russia and how that experience is reflected in orthodox art of the period. In Lust of Life, viewers of the film can glean a fairly accurate understanding of the circumstances surrounding and the overall arc of the life of Van Gogh, as long as they don"t get to hung up on the details.Goya"s Ghosts, meanwhile, deals with a plot and story that are complete contrivance -- a made up tale and a good a sordid story. Like the previous two films discussed in this list, the film assumes the premise that the artist, in this case Spain"s Francisco Goya, captures in his unique style the zeitgeist of his era.His surroundings and environment directly influence his work.Yet, Goya"s Ghosts is decidedly more concerned with the year it was released (2005) than it is with 1797, the year in which it is set.