Written by David Cerón Giraldo, Photo courtesy of SCAD
I am glad to see that Pedro Almodóvar remains obsessed with his mother. Or [in artsy terms] the archetype of a mother: provider, Gaia and Mother Earth. But beyond themes, at its heart, “Pain and Glory” is a straight dramatic film about the weirdness of growing up as an artist.
At the beginning of the film, we see Salvador Mallo as a 10-year-old who’s quick, introverted and full of potential. Cut to Mallo at 50 and he’s lonely, successful and creatively blocked. Also, done with the world.
Here, Almodóvar offers a story that is fittingly unpredictable. One minute it’s a beautiful white village, the next we’re in urban Madrid, these scenes add up to a chaotic life.
If Bond has a title sequence with ladies dancing to the plumes of gunfire, then Mallo has a visual festival of medical diagrams that detail the painful illnesses affecting him including asthma, migraines, insomnia and more. This raises questions about the relationship between the artist and their pain, and whether or not it fuels creativity. But just look at all those pretty colors.
Despite the scope of these topics, the story is told in small spaces from the perspectives of deeply flawed characters [most are divorced, drug-addicted]. Flipping between the man’s childhood and his rough years after the glory, Almodóvar seems more interested in quiet moments than award shows or extravagant parties.
Instead, Mallo meets with an actor he fought with years earlier, only to establish a new, fraught friendship. This opens the gates for acquaintances from his past to show up, sometimes by coincidence.
And yet, these moments didn’t strike me as forced, but rather as conversations that had to happen at some point in Mallo’s life, so why not now? With this, it’s hard to imagine an actor other than Antonio Banderas handling such loaded material.
Just as “Birdman” portrays an actor that’s boxed in by his past success as a superhero, “Pain and Glory” casts Banderas as a director that’s run out of juice, and by the sheer passage of time, grew shy to create and is even ashamed of who he is.
Here and there are nudges, as if Almodóvar was putting his arm around my shoulder and pointing at something that seemed unimportant such as references to autobiography, to art, to his mother. The best part of this approach is he made me care about an old, washed-up, rich, drug addled, sad, lonely, funny, film director who may just be Almodóvar himself. We all have our problems, we all have our past and what we do continues to define us.
We have to give up self-judgement, we all need time and help, to get better. “Don’t take away my paintings,” says Mallo to his agent. “They’re the only things that keep me company.”
