"All my films represent me, but this time I go further, and in it is my soul." This is the description of the spiritual autobiography "Pain and Glory" by the famous Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who was nearly 70 years old.
Picture: Pain and Glory
The claim that the debut of some masters is the peak is confirmed in Almodóvar: compared with the surprise brought by his early works such as "The Woman on the Verge of Collapse" and "Say To Her", the film has many secret and gentle details, the pain is there, the glory is there, but the inspiration and touching moments we see in his works in the past have become rare.
It is understood that Almodóvar created the work at the darkest and loneliest moment of his life, and the entire film consists of hidden memories and examination of the past. The film opens with the veteran director Salvador, played by Anthony Banderas, suspended in a swimming pool, and his pain appears: the film has reports of Salvador's physical condition, including asthma, tinnitus, headaches, and a series of physical and psychological symptoms. Almodóvar's expression of physical pain is crisp and neat, and the spiritual pain that elicits from it is his focus. Salvador thought of Alberto, an actor who had been in a bad relationship for 30 years. To celebrate the release of the film restoration they had worked together on, the two restored contact.
A surprising scene happened, because of the visit to Alberto, Salvador became addicted to drugs. Because of the long-term back pain and cough, Salvador took the powder from Alberto's hand. However, a moment of relief could not relieve his mental difficulties: he had not created a new work for a long time; the death of his mother also made him unable to let go for a long time.
In moments of relaxation, he always dreamed of childhood. The beautiful and shrewd mother (Penelope Cruz) did her best to raise him, and even if she lived in a cave, she tried to make room for her son to read and write. In order to get Salvador into the choir, she even humbly smiled at the director of instruction. Mothers have always been a warm image in Almodóvar's images, they often use weak and strong shoulders to support the weight of life, even if the livelihood is difficult, the whole body still blooms with full vitality.
Almodóvar once confessed in an interview that many of his experiences were similar to those of Salvador, but when he got caught up in the story, he blurred the line between reality and creation. He said he chose Banderas not only because he experienced the important events that Almodóvar experienced in the film in the 1980s, but also because he could deeply understand pain: Banderas also lay under the scalpel three times for myocardial problems two years ago, and the sense of crisis that life could be taken away by pain at any time allowed him to feel empathy. The paintings hanging in his apartment in Madrid in Salvador are actually the creations of Almodóvar, who liked the unusually intense tones because of the dullness of his childhood. He came to Madrid after the age of 20, and it was only after the franco regime that the New Wave of Culture in Madrid brought freedom to Almodóvar and gave him a new life. Those brightly colored paintings are his memories of pop's era of color explosion.
His mother was another anxiety in addition to his creative anxiety. Almodóvar is good at portraying women, starting from "The Woman on the Verge of Collapse", to the later "High Heels", "Say to Her", "Everything About My Mother", "Return", "Julieta", all of them are women, and the female figures in his films are invariably open-minded and brave, and the father image in Almodóvar's films has always been missing, and "Pain and Glory" is no exception.
But even so, in Salvador's narration, his achievements in film so far have not made him a son that his mother is proud of, because being a director is not what her mother wants him to do. In the film, she told him more than once, "Don't write her into the movie, because she hates all autobiographical movies." ”
What a deep loneliness it is that we can't be what the person we care about most hopes to be. Similarly, Salvador's busy global schedule did not allow him to let his mother die in his hometown, as promised. The pain and glory of life are finally two sides of the same coin here: glory becomes the source of suffering, and suffering is the cause of glory.
Up to this point, we can still determine that this film completely presents a director's review and introspection of his life, and there is no obvious deficiency or blame. However, he was Almodóvar, the artist who was hailed as the greatest Spanish director after Luis Buñuel and Carlos Sola. If it is acceptable to say that less aura and less open-mindedness is acceptable, then Almodóvar, who is less ambitious, really makes people feel his weakness.
The most moving scene of the film appears near the end, when Salvador sees the red of his gray childhood in a second-hand painting market. The painting, born of the hand of the mason who brought him the whim, reminded him of his first desires. The body of a strong man in that summer gave Little Salvador a high fever that fell to the ground like heat stroke. The heat wave between illness and desire, like a dream and not a dream, has since opened Pandora's box in little Salvador's heart, which is the original appearance of all his creations and every love. Regrettably, there are so few parts of such a miraculous stroke, "the most Almodóvar", that the play gradually loses its due tension in a kind of repetition.
It is worth mentioning that Banderas's incomparably precise performance has won back a city for Almodóvar's slightly old expression of the soul. The Almodóvar's royal actor contributed almost the best performance he has ever performed, and his every look and movement is so convincing that the film finally won the Best Actor Award at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which can be said to be true to Banderas and reflects the usual poisonous eyes of the French. (July)