There is, of course, a long history of great filmmakers coming to terms with their own history and mortality through storytelling. “Pain and Glory” has been compared to Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” for exactly that reason. Almodovar has never shied away from telling his own stories, particularly about the women in his life, but there’s a poignancy to the way he approaches it here that he hasn’t really reached before. It’s largely due to how he places himself in the center of the story, not as an observer or cinematic memory but as the protagonist. He’s asking questions about the nature of life and art that filmmakers have certainly asked before, but there’s a grace here that’s rare, even for him. It’s a delicate, complex film, lacking in some of the visual whimsy of his best work, but as grounded in character as anything he’s done.
One of the reasons for that is how much trust Almodovar places in Banderas, and how much that trust is reciprocated. Banderas never once feels like he’s doing an Almodovar impression, and yet their friendship clearly influenced the performance in ways that other actors couldn’t have possibly understood. Perhaps the best praise that I can pay both gentlemen is that, while the actor and director clearly shaped the character, Banderas and Almodovar both fall away and we become invested in the story of Salvador Mallo. He’s not just a stand-in as he could have been in a lesser film—a symbol for the aging auteur. He’s a fully-realized, emotional, complex character in his own right.
“Pain and Glory” will be too episodic for some. It has a surprising structure in the way it moves through encounters in Mallo’s life and his past, not always connecting the dots. But it also has cumulative power. Without spoiling anything, the final section of the film features the discovery of a piece of art that wouldn’t exist without Mallo or his mother, and then closes with the creation of another. Art may be shaped by pain and life, but it also captures beauty and glory like nothing else.
This review was filed from the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6th, 2019.
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