The Warmth of a Stranger's Home: An Analysis of Pain and Glory
The first thing I think about when I think of Pedro Almodovar’s Pain and Glory is the end. Not just the end of the film but the end of me. "My life flashed before my eyes" is the clichéd line for when confronted by death. However, in Pain and Glory, it is not death but the scepter of memory that looms over you and forces you to reflect.
Photo courtesy Sony Classics, Pain and Glory (2019)
Pain and Glory is essentially centered around a reflection of life by an aging filmmaker, Salvador Mallo. The film and its protagonist ponder upon a very specific past - that of Spain between the 60s, the 80s and the present. The 60s are shown through flashbacks to a rural childhood in Paterna where the director lived with his parents in a cave. At a point, the young Salvador unwillingly finds himself at a seminary which was his only chance to get an education. Just from the portrayal of that childhood alone we get a very clear look into Franco’s Spain at that particular stage.
However, Almodovar doesn’t just use cinema as historical record but as a conduit for personal history and revelation as well and this becomes more abundantly clear in the portrayal of the 80s which are not shown in flashback like the 60s but instead through aspects that permeate the present like music, art and crucial to the plot of the film, heroin. There is a stage play written by Salvador that is performed entitled ‘The Addiction’ in which he reminisces about his life and experiences during the counterculture era of the 80s. It is in the 80s where most of the titular glory comes from having been sourced by the height of youth, love, careers all amplified to the max by a drug haze. It was, according to Almodovar “a decade filled with light and shadow” (Smith, 2019) both generally, personally and professionally but it was “worth it.”
The “it” in question brings us to the pain that haunts Salvador in the present. Not just physical pain but “pains in the soul” as well. In the present, the aging filmmaker is afflicted by multiple medical conditions and has become extremely familiar with the operating table as well as a sizable collection of prescription drugs. There is a profound loneliness to him as, by this point, he has lost many of his intimate personal relationships and the only thing that seemingly remains from the golden glorious years in the 80s is a penchant for drug abuse.
Salvador is trapped in a terrible creative impasse for most of the film. “Without film-making my life is meaningless,” he says. Yet by the end of the film he is working again only this time he is recreating scenes from his childhood for the film. After being confronted by his past, he seemingly remembers how to breathe creatively again and is able to resume what he loves most. After witnessing Salvador’s reflections rejuvenate him both personally and professionally, you can't help but marvel at how effective and transcendental Almodovar’s use of memory is.
While watching the beautiful interior sets including the whitewashed cave walls of Salvador’s childhood right up to the characteristically bright coloured kitchen of older Salvador’s Madrid house, I think of home but a home isn’t necessarily the building; it is what the building represents. You could interpret Almodovar’s foray into the cave as a metaphorical return to the womb of sorts considering the role mothers have played in his filmography and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. Salvador’s mother is a prominent figure in the film played by Penelope Cruz in flashbacks and Julieta Serrano in the present. The point is clear to Almodovar fans who recognise Cruz and Serrano as the director's frequent collaborators but it is universalised by the fact that every single time Salvador feels he is at home, he is in his mother’s arms both as boy and man.
The other piece of imagery that sticks out is at the very beginning of the film when Salvador is completely submerged in a pool which is followed by a recurrent leitmotif of water throughout the film. Again, for those already familiar with previous works the scene is reminiscent of Bad Education (1986) but even without that connection, it still carries a lot of weight. “In the cinema of my childhood, it always smells of piss…and of jasmine, and of summer breezes” is a line that is repeated twice in the film initially as text on a screen then as part of the performance of The Addiction. It’s a line that’s most evocative of the sense of smell just like the scene of Salvador submerged. Whether it’s to escape from the loudness of a public pool or just to relax in a private one, chances are most people have done it as well before. There’s always that lingering smell of chlorine on the hottest summer.
I may not have lived in a cave in a Valencian village or gone to buy cocaine in some neighborhood in Madrid but this film feels familiar. After all, what’s more familiar than the warmth of a mother’s arms or the scent of summer? If cinema is Pedro Almodovar’s life and where he has made his home, I have found a warmth in it that I have been craving for a long time. There’s an undeniable human spirit to his films and my only hope is to find it in more films. ♦
References:
Smith, P. J. (2019, September). Stardust Memories, Sight and Sound, 34-40.