Forman and Carriere have chosen an original approach how to make a movie about a great artist and avoid the dullness of biographical sketches. Goya, played by Skarsgard, appears throughout the film, but is actually not part of the narrative line at all. Instead of his life, we see unfold a dramatic story of betrayals and turns of fate. A hideous sequence of personal and political abuse, cruelty, cynicism and shameless egoism builds the non-romantic love affair of an ambitious hypocrite and a young girl who becomes insane as the outcome of her sufferings. Goya supposedly is connected to both of them and becomes the witness of the various stages of the drama. Having in mind the title, it is clear that the two characters are just ghosts created by Goya's imagination to reflect the shattering social and cultural changes the artist lived through, changes that gave flesh to much of his work. For the sake of honesty, Goya's Ghosts cannot compete with Amadeus, even if both pursue a similar goal: to attract the viewer to the world of a great artist through a powerful storyline. In this case, the storyline was not that powerful and even if historical events determine what is happening to the central characters, the image of 18th-19th century Spain lacks dimension.
Review of Goya's Ghosts
