El Greco (2007)

sketch of portrait. superficial, pathetic, protected by music by Vangelis and the customs. each of the last represents the virtue of film who saves it to be a fiasco. in fact, only sin is the ambition to create a memorable film about the most important Greek painter from art history of Spain. the theme is generous, the possibilities to define Domenikos Teotokopoulos as hero of his period - too many. but the script is just a collection of clichés. the choice of Manichean way is far to be inspired. the use of ambiguity and inaccuracy not serves the cause in better manner. the dialogs are , in many scenes, fake. the speeches of El Greco front of his judges is far to be convincing for public. something essential missing. a pillar, maybe an axis. and except Sotiris Moustakas as Titian, nothing does the film to be more than cold dish. the desire of actors to give coherence to roles is closed by the not most inspired script and the director who choose a sketch not a portrait.so, poor El Greco !

I wanted to see this movie. The one with the highest budget in all Greek history. Well.. I still don't know where all that money was spent.It lacks of almost everything. No good dialogues, good actors wasted due to a, being good, a very poor script. It's a voice in off who tells you most part of the story... why do you want actors then I asked.Probably the customs, colours and music is the only thing you can remember after watching it but not enough. I wanted to stop the movie several times cause is so superficial. You don't get involved at all with any of the characters, not with the story. Actually you don't care about El Greco after 20 min watching it.I could feel the same frustration when I saw "El Capitán Alatriste". The Spanish movie with the highest budget ever in this country. Very, very disappointing. El Greco is, with all my respects, The Greek-Crap.

This film is the biggest production of Greek movie history.It cost 10,5 mil$ and was directed by a Cretan director, who wanted to tell the story of the biggest Cretan painter, and one of the greatest painters of all time, El Greco. The passion ,the film was made off, is profound and you can spot it all over the screen.The music by Vangelis is superb,cinematography makes the film to look like a live painting, performances are great and extremely vivid, sets and costumes are glorious.The movie was filmed at three countries, Greece, Italy, and Spain, which where the countries El Greco lived and created his masterpieces.If you know the work of Greco, this film is a grate opportunity to learn a lot about his life and where his passion came from.The tag line of this movie is "Can darkness overcome light?"

This is a film that tries too hard at "grandeur" and ends up nothing more than pompous dreck. El Greco's life and work are worthy of much better than this lifeless, corny exploration. The film boasts some of the most laughable, cringe-worthy dialog to grace the big screen -- a pretty devastating deficiency in what is supposed to be a "character film". In fact, I had serious trouble finding lines that were not shamelessly cribbed from dozens of period pieces which preceded this. I was half-expecting someone in the audience to break out with "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition", as this material screams for the Monty Python treatment. Someone should tell the makers of "El Greco" that it takes more than costumes and passable set-pieces to create a period film ; most importantly, it takes believable dialog and characters. The protagonists in El Greco talk like persons living in post-Enlightenment Europe (and very often, like outright contemporaries of ours). I am sorry, but no Renaissance painter (much less El Greco) would try to defend his art in front of the Inquisition by stating that "all art is blasphemy anyways". A good indication of the quality of the film is the manner in which Theotokopoulos is presented as painting ; like most childish depictions, he doesn't paint, so much as "attack" the canvas, presumably because all great painters fence with their canvases (rolls eyes). Incidentally, rolling your eyes is something that you will be doing quite often, should you choose to suffer through the countless clichés in the film. Ranging from the "talented person in a foreign land", to the two dimensional "villain", and the "love for the villain's daughter", this film manages to take a historical personality and turn him into a typical Hollywood-derivative cliché. Quite the accomplishment. The narration, too, is particularly tiresome and trite ; I usually love movies with narration, and yet, with this one, it seemed like they managed to hit all the wrong, hackneyed notes from start to finish. And all of this without taking the ridiculous, deus ex machina excuse for a conclusion into account.Widely promoted as "the most important Greek production ever" (of which there seems to be a new one every year), El Greco seems bound to achieve considerable commercial success in the Greek market. But it is the kind of movie most people will claim to like, and no one will bother to see twice. Which, after all, is the true indicator of a film's appeal. We weren't expecting loud explosions and car chases on a production about El Greco ; but a reasonable, intelligent plot and dialog that would not make you squirm in your seat in embarrassment would have been nice.Not recommended. For those that missed it, worry not. You'll have another "greatest Greek production ever" foisted on you by the Greek television channel-sponsors to look forward to next year.