The 92nd Academy Awards has just ended. Although "Pain and Glory" came back with a bad luck, don't forget that "Pain and Glory" was praised by many film critics like "Parasite" at this year's Cannes Film Festival. One of the reasons is that everyone regards this film as a semi-autobiographical film of Almodovar, and the Salvador in the film is the projection of the director Almodovar himself. Although Almodovar has said on many occasions that this film is not his autobiography, today's Oscar winner Feng Junhao also said: " The most personal is often the most creative."
"My life would be meaningless if I didn't make a movie." - Almodovar
This is a story that explores the relationship between art and life, recalling youth and loss. It is like a prose. A lot of things happened. Obviously, these events can be handled very emotionally, but the director Almodovar chose the calmest and most The method of restraint, just like contemplation, just tells the story, and the taste is left to the audience's imagination.
Salvador is an aging filmmaker who has had great success with his films. Since his mother's death, he has lost the direction of his life, fell into creative difficulties, and was severely depressed for a time. His body also succumbed to the disease, with back pain, migraines and suffocation that kept coming at him for no apparent reason.
Until one day, he learned that "Taste", one of his early works, was going to be restored and re-released, and he reunited with the actor he hated in that play. The male protagonist was also getting older. When the male protagonist saw that El Salvador was in great pain, he offered heroin to let him relax. El Salvador gradually became addicted, and childhood memories slowly emerged. After that, Salvador gave the actor the opportunity to play his latest one-man show, which led to Salvador, his lover, his mother, and many memories of his childhood.
In "Pain and Glory", there are two scenes in the play that are always talked about. One is that Salvador reminisces about his love past with his lover through the monologue of the actor Alberto. In the monologue, there is this sentence: "I I thought my love could make him overcome his addiction, but it's not like that, my love is not enough, love may be able to move mountains, but it is far from being able to save my lover from addiction, my love can't save me My lover." At this time, El Salvador's lover from many years ago was sitting in the audience, his eyes were red and swollen, and he was crying.
There is also a scene until the last shot of the film. When the camera zooms out, we realize that what we had earlier regarded as a childhood fragment in Salvador’s memories is actually a new play he is shooting, and Salvador has come out of his creative predicament.
In childhood memories, El Salvador's mother was a determined woman who, despite her poor family background, made every effort to give young El Salvador knowledge. When Salvador's mother was old, she held Salvador's hand and said to him, "You are not a good son." Salvador was surprised and blamed himself. From his mother's perspective: Salvador growing up, refusing to be a priest, refusing his mother to take care of himself, living a human life, falling in love with a drug-addicted man, and eventually becoming an artist, none of this is him Mother imagined. Although this journey is full of pain and danger as his mother thought, it is these pains that bring endless inspiration to his artistic works.
"Life and film are like two rivers that meet, separate, and feed each other." - Almodóvar
This is a very personal video work, and the real life of the male protagonist can always echo with his past. It's not just that his past life nodes can be connected into a whole life context, the film itself has enough power and self-contained structure to discuss an ultimate issue of art and life.
It is his life, his mother, and his lover that make the male protagonist's film art. Without these pains in life, his creation and his art would not be so bright, and I think that's why the film is called "Pain and Glory".
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