The nights that contain several pains . . . those nights, I believe in God and I pray to Him. The days I suffer only one type of pain, I am an atheist.
In Pedro Almodovar’s new masterwork, Pain & Glory, Antonio Banderas plays Salvador Mallo, a film director struggling with both chronic pain and creative stagnation. His physical condition won’t let him direct anymore; his emotional afflictions won’t let him write. Now, one of his first films is receiving renewed attention around its thirtieth anniversary and Mallo finds himself struggling with an onslaught of memories and figures from his past. This film has, of course, been read as autobiographical; I don’t really care about that element of the film. I think this film holds insights about Almodovar as an artist, of course, but so do all of his films in the way that all art holds images of its artist. To make the autobiographical elements of the film the main thrust of the movie is misguided I think. Standing quite apart from all that, what we have here is a genuinely great movie, an aching character study built around a career best Banderas performance.
Banderas gives a performance of greater depth than I’ve ever seen from him before; I wouldn’t just say this is his best work, I’d say it’s his best work by a substantial distance. His sadness and existential disappointment live deep in his eyes and it’s an honest, entirely unmelodramatic performance. The rest of the ensemble is excellent as well. Leonardo Sbaraglia is particularly exquisite as on old lover of Mallo’s; he’s only in about twenty minutes of the movie, but he’s absolutely precise and perfect. Penelope Cruz is as good as she’s been in a long time as the mother of the Mallo character in the flashbacks to his childhood. She got a really fascinating credit too. At the start of the movie, I noticed that she wasn’t showing up in the cast, so I was expecting to get one of those “And Penelope Cruz” mentions at the end. But instead she got something I’ve never seen before: “With the special collaboration of Penelope Cruz.” That’s a hell of a credit for an actor to get, especially from a director like Almodovar. Really makes me curious as to what the whole process there was.
Anyway, to wrap up, I found this movie to be really profoundly effective. It’s a meticulously written movie. It’s not what I’d call a movie with a dense plot by a stretch, but as the film progresses, you start to notice that the scenes that seemed to aimless and meandering have actually all been pointing directly to the following scene in a smart and clever way. And I liked the unmelodramatic feel of the movie. Banderas’ performance as Mallo is far from histrionic and the film isn’t interested in painting him as some sort of tragic figure that’s experiencing transcendent suffering. He’s just a man that’s very sad and in a lot of pain all the time and this makes his journey toward a kind of redemption feel more honest and it avoids the cheesy kind of triumph that a lesser writer/director might have given Mallo at the end of the film. Though that ending . . . I will say that you should go into this movie knowing nothing about it. The final scene is surprising, not in that it’s a plot twist, but it’s just not where you expected the movie to end and it does feature an interesting character revelation that makes you look at some earlier scenes in a new way, so try to not get spoiled on that. The last two or three shots of this film, ultimately, add up to one of the best endings of the year, a quietly redemptive moment of reflection. Much of the movie has been spent in reflection, but as the film ends we see the power of memory to inspire as well as to haunt, to refresh as well as cripple and while this is a very sad movie about a very sad man, it isn’t hopeless and I walked out of the theater feeling really uplifted. As the movie unfolds, you may find yourself wondering when the Glory comes in amidst all the Pain. Keep watching; you’ll figure it out. 4 stars.
tl;dr – beautifully written & directed and featuring a magnificent performance from Banderas, Pain & Glory is a movie that takes its time, but the emotion is cumulative & powerful. 4 stars.