If you believe what you see in the movies, everyone who has ever picked up a paintbrush is completely whacked out of their mind.  Henry Thomas’ character in Fever should have been locked up forever, and let’s not even talk about the messed-up Mafia art in Mickey Blue Eyes.  Films based on real-life talents like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jackson Pollock aren’t much different, showing artists as suffering, angst-ridden kooks with a gift that ultimately consumes them.

Carlos Saura’s Goya in Bordeaux is more of the same.  Spanish painter Francisco de Goya, considered by many to be the greatest artist of the modern era, is portrayed as an unhinged madman with a life full of enough hallucinations to make Timothy Leary jealous.  One of the continuing themes running through Goya’s work was that humans are no better than animals, a point driven home by the film’s opening scene, in which the bloody carcass of a bull dissolves into Goya’s decrepit 82-year-old face.

Bordeaux shows two different Goyas – one young and vivacious (José Coronado), and one old and out of his mind (Francisco Rabal).  The tales of young Goya are shown in flashbacks as the older Goya bores his young daughter (Daphne Fernández) with story after story of his glory days as he rots away on his deathbed.

We see a young Goya hoping to one day become the court painter to Spain’s Charles IV but instead finding exile with other nationalists after the liberal-stomping Ferdinand VII reclaimed his throne in 1814.  He fell in love with a beautiful Duchess (Maribel Verdú), and in his 40s, Goya went blind and found himself tormented by powerful headaches.  His work, which was always pretty dark, became even more disturbing.  The painter found himself haunted by both his troubling art and the Duchess, who died because of her opposition to the Queen.

Bordeaux’s story plays second fiddle to the film’s amazing visuals, which are as close as you can get to a Peter Greenaway film without actually having Greenaway involved.  Armed with his extraordinary cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro (Bulworth), Saura keeps the film interesting with several unique cinematic devices, ranging from the use of transparent wallpaper to having Goya’s art coming to life before your very eyes.  The film is highlighted by a recreation of Goya’s series of paintings called “Disasters of War,” which depicted Napoleon attacking the Spanish.

It would have been one thing if Saura (Tango) made Bordeaux into a plodding, two-plus-hour film, but it barely cracks the 90-minute mark – just enough to hold my attention.  The film won several Goya Awards, which are the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars.  Interestingly enough, the American film Oscar did not win any Oscars.

1:39 –

for some sexual content and violent imagery