Sadly when you take a great story, the life of the Greek painter, Doménicos Theotokópoulos, made famous during his time in Spain as “El Greco”, and place this story in the hands of an over-wrought director, Yannis Smaragdis, with a panache for melodrama and ensuring his actors over-act each and every scene, the result is never good. Such is the fate of El Greco. This film should be used by film school instructors to demonstrate the worse in archaic film style, including the creation of one dimensional characters. Most irritating is the mix of languages the film uses, it seems everyone in the 16 century could easily speak Greek, Italian, Spanish, English … and subtitles to boot. It is all too bad as the story of El Greco’s lifelong relationship and battle with Cardinal Niño de Guevara, Toledo’s Grand Inquisitor, does make for a good story. To sum-up, this dreadful film is an embarrassment to have shown at TIFF and worse, an embarrassment to El Greco’s art.
My rating, mainly for the fact Vangelis did the music, 2 out of 10.
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