Goya was posthumously credited with his love for the Duchess of Alba

Director Jose Luis Lopea-Linares may not have enough stars in the sky, but he feels confident in the genre, which he tested in the documentary project “Bosch. Garden of Dreams”, commissioned by the Prado Museum for the 500th anniversary of the death of Hieronymus Bosch during his anniversary exhibition. The film also showed the process of restoration of the “Garden of Earthly Delights”, and among the “talking heads” there were the most interesting personalities – Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie and many others.

The new film “Goya’s Shadows” is made using approximately the same patterns, but the living presence on the screen of the 89-year-old classic – writer, screenwriter, art connoisseur and historian by his first profession, Jean-Claude Carriere, saves the traditional biographical film from mediocrity.

Carriere himself does not yet know that this is his last trip to his beloved Spain, but we know this, and this knowledge sharpens the perception of the film, which becomes a kind of farewell to the genius of cinema. “Mahi” – naked and clothed. Carrier looks at them for a long time, enters into a conversation with them: “I saw you for the first time 50 years ago, perhaps more. I’ll be back. Will try. Good night. And see you soon, I hope.”

Carriere died on February 8, 2021. He lived a long and glorious life, and at the end of it he tried once again to understand something important in the Goya phenomenon, which had a strong influence on both his followers and outstanding filmmakers, in particular Luis Buñuel. Plunging into the world of Goya, traveling to the places where he was born and created his masterpieces, the narrator remembers his colleague and friend Luis Buñuel, with whom he worked for many years, starting with “The Diary of a Maid.” He talks about the most unusual things, for example, about how physiology influenced the artist’s personality, what his deafness took away and gave to Goya.

Carriere goes to the house where Goya was born, to his modest home, where much can be felt centuries later.

Jean-Claude Carriere worked with Milos Forman in the painting “Ghosts of Goya” and already experienced a lot. Everyday facts of the life of an artist who painted to order, close to the powers that be (and apparently, this situation suited him quite well) allow us to understand a lot about his worldview. They didn’t carry him in their arms, they didn’t perceive him as a deity, probably without fully realizing the scale of the personality that was nearby. This is an artist from whom you can commission a portrait. It’s the same as a craftsman.

The Sorbonne professor, brought in as an expert to participate in the film, believes that Francisco Goya was pleased with his career and the fact that he was close to the court. All this can now only be speculated upon. And every expert builds hypotheses about the behavior of those depicted in his paintings, those whom he painted. And no one knows exactly how it really happened.

One famous portrait by Goya depicts a woman who, having become seriously ill, commissioned him for a full-length portrait. Now it is in the collection of the Louvre, located near the La Gioconda, which is stormed daily by thousands of visitors from all over the world. There is no pandemonium in Goya’s painting. Not every tourist gets to see his masterpiece. The portrait is not included in the short tour of the Louvre, but it is impossible to avoid. The curator of Spanish painting at the Louvre talks about a woman forever captured in the painting.

The viewer has the opportunity to examine the details of famous works on a large screen, as if through a microscope. It turns out that when fulfilling the order, Goya did not bargain for the image of women’s feet, and he had them beautiful, but he raised the price if the customer insisted on a detailed image of the hands.

The outstanding Spanish film director Carlos Saura, who directed the film “Goya in Bordeaux” and who came to Moscow for the MIFF not too long ago, speaks about Goya. He talks about the cinematography of Goya’s paintings and utters an amazing phrase about how important Goya is for Spain in the sense of comprehending the brutal essence of violence and war.

Another speaker, perhaps the most exotic, Julian Schnabel is an American director and artist. He appears in an incredible white shirt with slits on the chest and talks about a Goya painting kept in the Prado. At the same time, he himself stands against the backdrop of a giant author’s reproduction of Goya with the image of a horsewoman. It was made to special order. Although it is a reproduction, it is the author’s. Like Saura, Schnabel talks about Goya and cinema, saying that he was not engaged in easel painting, but in something akin to the silver screen.

Goya’s doctors are depicted as donkeys. Obviously, there were reasons for this. The main witness of Spain, as Goya is called in this film, was deaf. And it’s phenomenal. And if you look closely at the people depicted in his paintings, you will notice how they peer at us in order to better understand. The conclusion is that they are deaf, just like Goya who wrote them.

Luis Buñuel was also an Aragonese, like Goya, and wrote a script about him, which was never filmed. This alone brings them together, according to Carriere. As well as the fact that Buñuel also became deaf.

It takes effort for deaf people to understand many things. Experts lead us to this hypothesis. Otorhinolaryngologist, a major specialist in the diagnosis of hearing organs, Hector Valles discusses how Goya lost his hearing forever and entered the world of absolute silence and total deafness. He was found lying on the street. He did not immediately come to his senses; he was hallucinating. His loneliness worsened with his hearing loss. “His misfortune became a blessing for us” is, of course, a damning conclusion.

Even an astrophysicist talks about Goya. According to his theory, the great artist was fascinated by the idea of ​​overcoming the possibilities of light. The historian “read” the portrait of the Duchess of Alba with her disproportionate finger, her gesture through the alphabet of the deaf. Were he and Goya lovers? One can only guess about this, but it is clear that he was passionate about her. The Duchess of Alba was a representative of high society, beyond the reach of the artist. Goya turns from a figure of distant times into almost a contemporary, an ordinary person. We learn a lot of everyday details about him: how he lived, what and whom he loved, where he went. For example, every Monday he attended bullfights.

Carrier’s widow, the writer Naal Tajadod-Carrier, who was born in Iran, also took part in the filming. Jean-Claude says about her in the film: “I live with exiles. My wife is Iranian.” He counts many artists among the exiles, including Buñuel, who ended up in Mexico. Naal said her husband felt it was a fantastic privilege to be buried in his village. Goya was buried in Madrid, where he created his famous paintings, in which his own image can be discerned. His head is everywhere, as Carrier will say.

One elderly gentleman is looking at Goya’s paintings through a magnifying glass, and his wife is sitting in front of them on a folding chair. Visitors to his exhibition in Basel also talk about Goya. The artist’s multimedia exhibition, which we see on the screen, is a collection of his enlarged paintings, essentially a surrogate that produces a horror effect. But his living still life in the Louvre, where a ram with a clouded eye seems to be looking at us, once again testifying to the fragility of all things, plunges him into a similar state.