Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Quick Impressions:
My husband and I loved Volver back in 2006, and after the Oscars, we attempted to binge as many other Pedro
At any rate, my jumbled memory of Almodóvar‘s early work pointedly emphasizes for me how different Pain & Glory is tonally from all of the other Almodóvar films I’ve seen. It is much more subdued, measured, and reflective, and it feels extremely personal.
It is also completely different from Parasite, the other highly touted foreign film this year. (I’m sure that there are many other excellent foreign films, as well, but critics, pundits, and Oscar bloggers keep pitting these two against each other and debating which will win Best Foreign Film.) The two movies are, in fact, so radically different to experience that it seems a crime even to compare them. To ask which is better is a ridiculous waste of time and surely the wrong way to approach either. (Imagine if you were lucky enough to visit The Grand Canyon and The Louvre in one summer, and then the first question someone asked you was, “Which one is better?”)
Parasite is about how class disparity affects everyone, and Pain & Glory is about how personal suffering and triumph affect one man’s soul. There’s a universal quality to both films, but they are about two very different types of hidden, inner life. Also, Parasite is a twisty-turny, funny, scary, action-packed blockbuster, and Pain & Glory is…not.
Lately, I keep hearing people use the (extremely grating) sentence, “This is a film for grown-ups” (as if to suggest that movies aligning with the speaker’s personal tastes are somehow objectively superior). In my experience, movies that get described this way are often some of the least challenging and rewarding. Plus my ten-year-old daughter loves watching classics and Oscar nominated films, so I’m not sure grown-ups have some exclusive claim to sophisticated taste.
That said, Pain & Glory really is a film for older people, the older the better. (“Grown-ups” won’t work in this case. When you’re twenty-five, you’re grown up, but I’m pretty sure you’ll like this movie better when you’re forty…or fifty…or seventy-five.) A child who loves film may well appreciate the fine acting and gorgeous use of color in this one, but that child will not have the life experience to understand what Banderas’s character is going through. Sometimes as parents, we strive to be vigilant and keep our children from viewing objectionable, R-rated material. But no child is going to want to watch this movie. Keeping kids from sneaking in won’t be a chore. (Bored teens might even try to sneak out!) In that way, it reminds me of the acclaimed 2013 film Amour. If your kids insist on watching films like these, just let them! (One note for parents, though. Pain & Glory does contain a prolonged bit of full frontal male nudity. The man in question is just bathing, but what’s going on in the scene is fairly complex.)
I’m not saying that no one young could enjoy Pain & Glory. It’s a well crafted, beautifully acted film, no question. I just don’t think that young people will readily connect to the film unless they are hardcore fans of Almodóvar, obsessed with the Oscars, dealing with chronic pain or illness, suffering from heroin addiction, or gay. (I realize that’s a lot of stuff, so clearly this movie will have fans under 40. Still, this is the type of film you must seek out and be thoroughly committed to watching to enjoy.)
The film is definitely rewarding and deserving of the acclaim it has already received. Antonio Banderas won Best Actor at Cannes, and by the time the movie’s over, it’s really easy to see why. Penélope Cruz is also excellent in a smaller role. And Asier Etxeandia is absolutely phenomenal. I’m totally unfamiliar with his work but think he’s Oscar worthy here, nearly as good as Banderas (though in a less demanding role).
The Good:
This is almost like watching a mystery at first. The early scenes are quite puzzling and disjointed, unified only by the prominence of the color red. Antonio Banderas plays an aging, retired filmmaker (Salvador Mallo, a fictive alter-ego of writer/director Pedro Almodóvar) who is in poor health and worse spirits. The story unfolds in a disorienting fashion. We see Salvador talking one-on-one with various figures from his past and present. For some time, we do not understand how these scenes are related or what is motivating Salvador.
These early scenes feel a bit disjointed. At best, they’re disorienting, curious. Nobody seems to understand Salvador’s precise motivations, and we don’t know, either. We know only that he has motivations. (Otherwise, this would be a pretty terrible movie, right?)
But ultimately, the film is so rewarding. I think of it as a flower slowly opening. Once we arrive at the center, we finally understand how the petals are connected. (Thanks to all the red, I’m envisioning a poppy. Feel free to imagine the film as the flower of your choice.) But the point is, the story is driven by Salvador’s primal passions, and by the time we’ve seen everything, we know him so intimately. What once seemed strange and disjointed in retrospect tells an extremely meaningful, powerful, personal story.
This is the type of film that’s hard to discuss spoiler free without sounding mockably pretentious, but after seeing it, I totally understand all the love for Banderas’s performance, and I personally wish Penélope Cruz and (especially) Asier Etxeandia could get some Oscar love as well.
Etxeandia honestly outshines Banderas initially because part of the power of the Banderas performance is its slow reveal of Salvador’s soul. There’s a pretty meta moment when Salvador gives Etxeandia’s Alberto Crespo a crucial bit of direction when the latter plans to perform a scene. What Salvador says here tells us so much about his own behavior and how he views the world. It also highlights why Banderas’s performance has such a high degree of difficulty.
Etxeandia’s performance is so showy. He’s dripping charisma and emoting the way most people sweat on a hot day. He’s got the same kind of energy as Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, except Captain Jack Sparrow exists in a family friendly, comedic, swashbuckling adventure, and Pain & Glory definitely is not that.
I always like Penélope Cruz, and her performance is the highlight of the first half of the movie for me. She’s so charming as Salvador’s frequently agitated, dissatisfied mother. As a mother of a young son, I found her performance so easy to identify with. I don’t mean that as vague praise, either. I strongly identified with specific moments in her scenes, particularly the way the, “So…now we live in a cave,” scene unfolds. My own son keeps a vigilant eye on my mood and casually tries to cheer me up if he detects dips. Since I have a mood disorder, he’ll probably grow up and make a movie about his fraught relationship with me one day. Cruz also reminds me of my own mother in this scene. We moved a lot when I was a child, and not all of our accommodations thrilled her.
Julieta Serrano who plays the older incarnation of Salvador’s mother charmed me, too. She and Cruz are so in sync that after seeing Serrano on screen for a few minutes, I began to wonder, “Could that be Penelope Cruz in old age make-up?” Initially I (correctly) assumed it was a different actress. (I mean, their eyes are a different color!) But they bring the character to life so similarly that I really started to wonder. I’ve seen Serrano before in Almodóvar‘s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Dark Habits, (and probably others), but as I’ve confessed those films (and more!) kind of run together for me, and I don’t remember them well. Serrano has some of the funniest moments in this film and brings a welcome vivacity into Salvador’s often dour adult life.
Young Asier Flores is also a great addition to the cast as Salvador’s vision of his younger self. He has a lovely singing voice, angelic really. (I personally think the teachers at the seminary can be forgiven for letting him skip so many of his academic subjects to devote his time to choir rehearsal. Obviously he made something of himself even without formal geography lessons.)
Aurally, the film is a treat. The score by Alberto Iglesias is at some times bold and effectively jarring, at others almost completely unobtrusive. The singing in the scenes featuring young Salvador or his mother is hauntingly lovely. And then, too, sometimes the silences are so heavy. A number of scenes feature no background music at all for long stretches, and the ponderous silence is deeply felt.
Visually, the film is always powerful and compelling. In fact, initially, the visuals are by far the most compelling part of the story since Salvador is revealed to us incrementally. For quite a while, we’re not entirely sure what we’re watching. But we want to keep watching because it all looks so captivating. Honestly, the engaging use of the color red is as crucial to the film’s success as Banderas’s moving performance. Jose Luis Alcaine probably deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, but I feel like I’m saying this a lot lately. Maybe I’m just wistful about good photography since I broke my favorite camera on vacation this summer. I constantly imagine that if I still had it, I would regularly be getting shots like the ones I so admire in all these films.
Best Scene Visually:
From the splashy opening credits onward, Pain & Glory is gorgeous. The visuals are so excellent because 1) The shots are simply aesthetically pleasing and 2) The careful use of the color red perfectly externalizes Salvador’s inward emotional complexity. It’s a color scheme that highlights the deep, intertwined passions underpinning and guiding his entire life (both as an artist and as a human being).
Surely even audience members who never connect emotionally with the characters and fail to feel invested in the narrative must admit that it’s a very beautiful film to look at. What a gorgeous spectacle! (It’s especially great if you’re a fan of the color red.) (And I mean, who isn’t?) Not since Marnie have I seen so much red in a motion picture! But it’s used here more deftly than in Marnie.
For a film that gives us such bold, dramatic color, though, there is a tremendous subtlety to the performances. Some of my favorite visual memories are of Penélope Cruz’s face, and not just because she’s beautiful (though she is). I can specifically remember the expression on her face at several key moments, and often these slight shifts and twitches of her eyes and mouth are almost underplayed, but terribly significant and revealing.
There’s also this seamless piano transition early on that I loved wholeheartedly.
I suppose if I must pick a best scene visually, I’d call out the moment when the child Salvador sits on a chair as the sunlight streams down from above–pretty as a picture.
Another great looking scene, though, is Alberto Crespo’s performance of “Addiction.”
Best Action Sequence:
The singing is so haunting in the early scene of washing laundry in the river.
I also like Salvador’s coughing fits, mainly because his choking is so dramatic. I know people don’t win Oscars for choking, but this does up the degree of difficulty of Banderas’s performance. His medical maladies never look contrived.
Best Scene:
The performance of “Addiction” is beyond captivating, and the moments with Salvador’s aged mother are touching and occasionally funny, but without a doubt, the best scene is the one I’ll also single out as the highlight of Banderas’s performance.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Antonio Banderas:
Every time I think of Antonio Banderas, I remember The How Do You Say? Ah Yes, Show bit on Saturday Night Live. This really isn’t fair to Banderas, but that sketch was always much funnier than it deserved to be and is permanently burnt into my mind. In fact, for me, that bit and Puss in Boots represent the totality of Banderas’s career (even though it was Chris Kattan on SNL, and I have seen Banderas in non-Shrek-related ventures).
But I’m going to have to clear some mental space for memories of this marvelous performance that starts small and builds into a tour de force.
Without a doubt, the best scene in the film comes when Salvador is unexpectedly reunited with an old lover. Working in tandem with the performance of “Addiction,” this scene reveals so much. Finally we begin to unravel the mysteries of Salvador Mallo. And Banderas is just so good here. I became so emotionally invested in his character, and I still remember subtle changes to the expression on his face as the scene plays out. At this point, the movie really picks up emotional steam. Finally we begin to understand things about Salvador that have previously been mysterious, and we keep learning more and more about him for the rest of the film.
The Negatives:
Pain & Glory is not for everyone. I say that a lot about films, so let me go a bit further. Pain & Glory is not for most people. If some Oscar buff or foreign film enthusiast is dragging you along with them and you don’t usually like these types of films, please have them drag you to something else.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s an extremely rewarding movie, but if you go in even faintly hostile, you will definitely hate it. For at least the first half of the movie, we don’t really understand the protagonist, so we also don’t know why certain things matter to him, why certain conversations are linked in his mind, why he is motivated to do certain things. The entire movie is about solving the mystery of Salvador Mallo. The ultimate reveal is so satisfying, but it’s a slow process. And the mystery isn’t a Scooby Doo type caper. We’re just trying to understand the inner workings of one man’s soul, as if we are going through a crisis along with him, yet we don’t even grasp the reality of who he is until the end.
I hear a lot of people saying lately that Parasite isn’t like most foreign films. Well, this one is. Pain & Glory seems exactly like the kind of thing that would have gotten raves at Cannes. (Think of a film like Amour.) It is a good, rewarding film, but it is for a patient, mature audience who go in wanting to watch it. We must commit from the first frame and struggle through patiently until we get our reward. It’s quite different from the other films of Pedro Almodóvar that I’ve seen in that it is not a comedy, not sensationalized, not about any wacky events, not even melodrama. It’s just a meditation on the meaning of life by an artist who is aging, grief-stricken, and in chronic pain (both physical and psychological).
I’ve read that Pain & Glory was partially inspired by Fellini’s 8 1/2, an undisputed classic that I’ve never seen. I have seen the movie musical Nine. As I recall, Pain & Glory is much better than that (though admittedly, my only memory of Nine is Judi Dench singing a surprisingly engaging little number about Les Folies Berger. I didn’t hate the movie like some, but clearly it didn’t stick with me). I believe that Pain & Glory is supposed to be only quasi-autobiographical and partially fictional. I don’t know enough about Almodóvar’s life to know where the story deviates from fact. I do know that it seems to be a great tribute to his mother…and to himself. It’s pretty hard to watch and not feel that the film makes a light comparison between the Holy Family and the director’s own. (I mean, he names himself Salvador!) The imagery in the childhood scenes constantly made me think of Mary and Jesus. I don’t think the director is expressing Messianic pretensions. But I do think we are meant to feel deeply that all of the religious sentiment he has in his life is tied up in memories of his mother. I suppose hostile viewers could grumble that he’s getting carried away with his own importance, though.
Understanding this movie takes attentive patience, and sufficient life experience to relate to the character doesn’t hurt either. In the end, it’s all so rewarding and emotionally resonant that I personally found the movie worthwhile. But the early scenes are disjointed and bewildering, at times off-puttingly so.