A film by Milos Forman is always an event. This will probably not remain as one of the best in his career, and was surrounded by a level of controversy, not the least among critics who received it very differently. Yet, it is certainly a film to watch.

The story actually does not have Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) in the center. It is rather the story of a corrupt morality policeman of the 18th century (Javier Bardem) imprisoning a young girl (Natalie Portman) on the unjust suspicion of practicing Judaism in secret. It is the story of a police state built on social injustice relying on pretended moral puritanism in order to save the system. This happens at the price of huge human suffering like the drama in the center of the story, and here is the painter as a witness, living the dilemma of becoming involved as a human or remaining a witness as an artist. We know what path Goya chose.

I was not unhappy neither with the acting, nor with the story line, although it is a little bit too melo-dramatic and too much prone to coincidences. Forman is not so much focused on the drama or better say melo-drama, or even in the historical detail, although he seems to be on familiar ground getting back to the period in 'Amadeus'. What he is busy with seems to be more re-creating some of Goya's paintings and prints and tracing back the origin of inspiration of these masterpieces. In a way the film can be read as justification of the choice Goya made in life.

It's 1792 Madrid. The Inquisition is interested in painter Francisco Goya (Stellan Skarsgård)'s provocative art. Luckily for him, brother Lorenzo Casamares (Javier Bardem) is his supportive patron. Inés Bilbatúa (Natalie Portman) is brought into the Inquisition for not eating pork. She is accused of being a Judaiser and put into a stress position called The Question. Her rich merchant father asks Goya to invite Lorenzo for dinner. He in turn puts Lorenzo into The Question to coerce an outlandish confession. He blackmails Lorenzo to help get Inés released.

The first hour is terrific. It has dark and tense turns. The characters are great. It builds up a compelling drama. The first problem starts with the family letting Goya leave as they torture Lorenzo. He could easily have gone to the authorities. It's a small logic break but then the story expands in scope and out of shape. This could have been a great movie if it stayed small. Milos Forman goes crazy and then the French invades. The second half is more convoluted and there are too many convenient turns. By way of explaining, I almost half-believed in this as a real Goya story. Granted, I don't know anything about the artist but these characters seem real enough. By the second half, there is no chance that this is anywhere near reality. This is half of a great movie.

I can't comment on the latter part of the film, having been called away on a medical emergency (my dermatologist had developed a slight case of eczema),about the time that Javier Bardem shows up as a prosecutor for Napolean's administration in Spain.

The overall impression is that exquisite attention was paid to period detail. By Gar, when the camera takes us into a Spanish tavern in 1792, it convinces us that this is the real thing. The big round loaves of pan tierno piled on the table have minute cracks running this way and that along the hard beige crust, just like in old paintings. And the upper-class merchants live in conditions of splendid opulence.

The story, for as long as I was able to follow it, has Stellan Skarsgard as a fortyish master painter. He plays a slightly more active role than the narrator in a Somerset Maugham novel, almost an observer, except that he's obsessed with the beautiful young Inez, who serves as his model for angels. He paints a lot of classy portraits and religious spectacles, but he also produces sketches of Boschian monstrosities. I read somewhere that this was due to a metabolic dysfunction. Skarsgard is marvelous, as usual, though his face, grown pudgy and nodular, is beginning to look more the elderly Rembrandt than like any Spaniard's.

Randy Quaid does a small but effective turn as King Carlos of Spain, if you can imagine. Somebody must have finally asked him to act.

Natalie Portman is fine as the beautiful young Inez, repulsive later as the victim of the Inquisition, her jaw out of place, her skin pustular, and generally looking like death warmed over. I only caught her in one scene as Inez's daughter, Alicia, who is a whore, but she sounded more like a Valley Girl than a Spanish hooker.

Javier Bardem gives the best of the principle performances. First, he's a mild-mannered priest who initiates the last phase of the inquisition, his voice tentative and thoughtful. But he's a phony through and through. He strings the naked Natalie Portman up by her arms, tied behind her back. (There's a name for that, the strappado.) That's in bad taste. Then he has the temerity to surreptitiously make love to the virginal Portman while pretending the pray with her. If that's not in good taste, maybe it's not so bad as torturing her. Oh, yes. The torture is called by a euphemism -- "put the question to somebody", or "put somebody to the question" -- I forget. But torture is torture and it doesn't matter which direction the phrase takes. They could have avoided any confusion by simply calling it "enhanced interrogation." (The writers don't pass up too many opportunities for social comment.) As a matter of fact, there are so many plot threads going that the social comment seems to be the main theme. I missed the ending, which sounded from the next room like one big battle. But what we come away with, apparently, is a neatly painted picture of humanity in which art is constant and prejudice and war is monstrous. Like the distinction between Goya's high-class paintings and his sketches of grotesques.