Pain and Glory is Almodóvar’s Best Film
Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar crafts his crowning achievement in Pain and Glory, a deeply personal story told in the medium of a fictitious film-director named Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) who starts talking to lead-actor Alberto Crespo (Asier Etxeandia), who starred in Mallo’s most-known film, Sabor. Mallo lives in constant chronic pain, uncontrollably choking at times and frequently gets headaches and back pain. He starts “chasing the dragon” to try and cure his pains, but progressively gets addicted to heroin and starts experimenting with other drugs. As he takes heroin, we see flashbacks of his life when he was a child and lived with his mother (Penélope Cruz).
Pain and Glory contains Antonio Banderas’ best-ever performance as Salvador Mallo, a conflicted film director on his decline who feels he doesn’t have a lot to live for, as he slowly starts to destroy his life with heroin. The most heartbreaking aspect of Banderas’ performance comes from his voice-overs (yes) talking about human anatomy and the different ailments the human body can have until it ultimately dies. The “anatomia” scene is the film’s most visually expressive sequence and destroys the final act of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite in the process. Its cinematography by 81-year old José Luis Alcaine is incredibly expressive and is a must-see in theaters. Every frame that is created by Alcaine and expressively directed by Almodóvar needs to be witnessed on the big screen. Banderas and Cruz both give terrific performances. This is Penélope Cruz’s best performance since Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother). She isn’t in the movie for a whole lot, but every scene she is in she steals. Even the old version of Mallo’s mother, in later flash-backs, reminds you of Cruz’s performance. Her impact is felt throughout the entirety of the 113-minute runtime.
During the entirety of the movie, we observe Mallo’s journey of self-destruction through heroin, but we keep learning more about him and his own inner “dragons” he tries to chase with the drug. Pain and Glory is, at times, surprisingly funny and heartwarming, with fantastic actors giving terrific, career-best performances. I especially loved the love/hate relationship between Banderas’ Mallo and Etxeandia’s Crespo. One scene in particular, in which Mallo decides not to attend the anniversary screening of Sabor at the Cinémathèque and stays home with Crespo and has a Q&A by phone is particularly funny, but also incredibly heartbreaking. The beauty of Pain and Glory is presented through its lush cinematography, production design, but, mostly, acting. When Crespo performs a text written by Mallo in front of a studio audience, L’addiccion, my heart sank completely, as Mallo’s text can be interpreted as a period in Almodóvar’s life. When it is revealed that the flashbacks involving Cruz is actually a movie that Mallo is shooting — it’s the final nail on the head that Almodóvar is doing a film about himself. I laughed, I cried, I felt an array of emotions I didn’t feel with Joon-ho’s Parasite. It’s because Almodóvar is a better filmmaker than Joon-ho, who is able to convey emotional power through minimalistic acting and terrific visual representations. If you thought Parasite was the best foreign language film of 2019, without having seen Pain and Glory, don’t speak to me. Watch it, and then we can talk.
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