« Goya , a fountain for us all »
This surprising movie started out as a documentary, already an innermost route from the very beginning. Director José Luis Lopez-Linares and Jean-Claude Carrière embarked on a journey following GOYA from the Prado Museum to his native village, Fuendetodos, near Zaragoza. The two worked together before on a documentary on Carrière’s famous collaborator, Luis Buñuel; remember the pure cinema, his poetical exercises. No wander « the Ghost of Buñuel » came wander by during this filming, as well. One tribute became a double tribute and with the farewell of the French screen-righter, February 2021, we have here a triple tribute: “Goya, Carrière and the Ghost of Buñuel”.
The director managed to render the intimacy between the three genius artists. Forget the epochs, Goya was a precursor of modernism, a pioneer in employing art as manifest tool, traveling with panache between the official propaganda and the societal criticism. Between love of a Duchess and love for the oppressed population he walks from the rich power places to the secrecy of his etching studio to produce some of history’s most political art works: Caprichos; with it’s famous « The Sleep of reason Produces Monsters ». Jean-Claude Carrière signed with Miloš Forman the biographical/fictional drama « Goya’s Ghosts », 2006. José Luis Lopez-Linares, following Carrière with the camera witnessed the fountain Goya was for the screen-righter. Each place, each building, each landscape and art work would unravel stories as if the three of them experienced it together, remember Buñuel, the other famous Spanish artist, kept calling in. They all lived in Spain and in France, shared the same passion for sharing culture and messages. There is something of quantum physics, the beholder becomes the contemplated.
Let’s remember some of Jean-Claude Carrière’s famous works: Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire, Valmont, At Eternity’s Gate. Just like Buñuel and Goya, he is nurturing a mystery feeling. In this intimate travel into Goya’s universe Carrière is highlighting many symbols where the visible is but light’s floaty foam. His sudden condition, plunged in absolute silence, opened Goya’s eyes to even deeper meanings, and Jean-Claude Carrière is reading the paintings for us like books yet, this movie, is very far from an hermetical art documentary. Surrealism, modernity, war, migration, this crazy world, but for all three of them an absolute source of beauty.
This film turned out to be a farewell, what better way for Jean-Claude Carrière than to make it in front of the camera. Surrounded by his precious friends Goya and Buñuel he says goodnight to Maja Desnuda, the first ever profane life-size female nude, as man is but human and mortality his precious devine gift.
Death breaks the cage but does not kill the bird
Is telling his wife, citing an Iranian poet. As he remains here below through his woks and cinematographic visions and finally can look to see it all.
by Alexandra Mas
the film Goya, Carrière and the Ghost of Buñuel – L’ombre de Goya will be in theatres from September 21St 2022
