Francisco de Goya’s Fight with Cudgels depicts two men submerged, knee-high, in the ground, beating each other with wooden clubs. It’s neither here not there that Goya didn’t originally paint the figures this way, but rather on grassy ground; this image, the result of the oil painting’s negligent conservation, has nevertheless become a metaphor for Spain’s eternal cycle of fruitless conflict. Álex de la Iglesia’s film, which earned Best Screenplay and Best Director at the 2010 Venice International Film Festival, returns to this idea of a violent and self-destructive Spain in the guise of circus clowns dueling for the love of a gorgeous trapeze artist.