Text | Three thousand years old
Spanish director Pedro Almodovar's new work "Pain and Glory" can be seen, if you haven't seen it yet, it is absolutely impossible to say.
This film, which is very popular with the audience and in line with the judges' taste, still lost to Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" at the Cannes Film Festival.
The director once again regretted leaving. If I remember correctly, this is the sixth time to nominate the Palme d'Or.
Pedro Almodovar apparently wanted to make his own 'Eight and a Half'.
In my opinion, the movie "Pain and Glory" has not been able to reach the height that has long been regarded as a masterpiece by directors all over the world.
There are two reasons:
One, the form. The parallel montage narrative strategy of reality and memory shuttle back and forth, weaving a compassionate, sad and soft inner world.
Such a structure is too fancy, and it is a little less candid in a serious autobiographical work.
2. Expression. As can be seen from the title of the film, the director's early pains were all given directly, such as illness, the death of his mother, misunderstanding of friends, the death of first love, etc., and even arranged directly in the lines.
It’s okay to complain and speak on behalf of the industry, but I can see the taste of Si Xu complaining in the movie.
There is no doubt that professional directors must have liked this film very much. For me, it is better to reverse the strategy of form and expression.
The form is frank and straightforward, and a little more subtlety in the expression will make the film more temperament.
However, this post focuses on exploring the wonderful use of director Pedro Almodovar to shuttle back and forth between reality and memory.
play with water
The first shot at the beginning is the water, where the protagonist Salvador is in a potential swimming pool.
The eyes are slightly closed, the water line is connected with the shooting of the knife on the body, which is great.
The assembly of film and television footage must conform to the audience's thinking style, living habits and logic of life.
The water in the pool is homogeneous with the water in the outer waters, and the actors close their eyes and meditate, which naturally evokes memories.
The scalpel on the body is a foreshadowing, and it completes the structural symmetry with the end of the film, a very informative shot.
Little Salvador riding on his mother's back, pounding clothes, drying sheets, and humming with his neighbors, captured me.
The performance of the Spanish goddess Penelope Cruz is absolutely beautiful. Childhood Salvador is reminiscent of the director's other film "Bad Education", clean, clear, with a voice like nature.
Pedro Almodóvar has kept all his childhood dreams alive on the screen.
This memory has no stains, no impurities, just so pure.
two pianos
From the water to the past, the prop of water becomes a piano in the second paragraph.
It is still a homogeneous transformation, which makes people fortunate to hear what is the real sound of nature.
In the coffee shop with the female assistant, the piano performance was switched directly from the keys to the childhood practice of vocalization with the priest in the choir, inadvertently returning to the past.
El Salvador became the soloist of the choir with superior congenital conditions.
Three Flying Leaves
Salvador found the actor he worked with more than ten years ago, and he has been out of film for many years due to drug addiction.
This time the conversion relies on "flying a leaf".
Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, etc. are very important props in movies. This kind of thing that can change people's consciousness can often stimulate the creator's bizarre imagination, which has wonderful benefits.
In the movie "One Step Away", Wanyan Yingfei gave Wanyan Yingfei a leaf:
In the movie "Burning", Ben also gave Emi a leaf:
Smoking can't help but remind people of the "Dirty Ashtray Award" awarded to film and television dramas. Global tobacco control is a good thing, but it can't be killed with one stick, and the smoking scene in film and television dramas can't be completely denied.
If tobacco is a means of expression, it cannot be cut. For example, in the above three groups, the grouping of the lens depends entirely on "flying leaves", if you delete it, you will not be able to understand it.
If the smoking scene is purely cool and cheap, it would not be a pity to cut it off.
four sleep
In fact, the passage of this scene still relies on "Flying Leaves". The director bought drugs from drug dealers, and after returning home and taking them, he lay in bed, his consciousness gradually blurred, and his memory was completed.
The taboo in writing ancient style poems is that the same words appear in the poems, and the same expressions should be replaced by synonyms, especially in the rhyme, which must not be the same. This is the difficulty of creating ancient poetry.
I humbly think that this principle also applies in the movie. If the flashback method is repeated, it will make the video paragraphs become bloated and piled up.
Therefore, although the director's arrangement this time is "flying leaves", he still relies on sleep to transition.
Director Pedro Almodóvar has shown a distaste for religion since he was a child, and he expresses his emotions so bluntly in the film.
There are also gay friends visiting in the middle of the film, and so on, so that the audience thinks that this is a film of the director's autobiography.
five photos
Old photos are best understood, though. Judging from our daily experience, looking through old photos can evoke memories, relieve stress and relax emotions.
El Salvador also lived in the room where his mother died before the death of the two of them.
From photos, it can be extended to commemorative personal items. Even if it is a memory, there are many props that can be used for development.
From this moment on, the movie turns from reminiscing about my childhood self to reminiscing about the days I spent with my mother.
The mother didn't like Salvador's career as a director, and even didn't like the female neighbors mentioning her son's career.
This career that tortured herself and made her honorable was actually not recognized by her mother. The pain of director Pedro Almodovar, maybe, I can understand.
Six CTs
Electronic computed tomography, a prop that is rarely used in movies.
It's good, the body enters another relatively closed device, causing a short-term barrier from reality, so as to complete the memory.
In addition to the mental torment, El Salvador's body was also devastated.
After a period of depression and escape, the director chose to face himself and regain his confidence in life.
All the glory must bear the pain that ordinary people cannot understand.
The foreshadowing of oil painting is also arranged in the memory paragraph, and the setting is more ingenious. The director does not seem to want to leave behind any characters who have had an intersection with his own life.
Female neighbors, mothers, priests, first loves, co-actors, fathers, painting men, etc., on the way back and forth between reality and memory, in the moment wrapped in pain and torture, they are all people who are enough to make themselves glorious.
Seven narcotics
After the scan, the doctor was preparing for the surgery in El Salvador, and the director said he had started writing again.
A dose of anesthetic was injected, and Antonio Banderas's performance was much stronger than that of a domestic four-character star.
This is a switch using drugs, and the role of drug use I mentioned earlier.
Especially in horror, suspense, and spiritual films, medicine is an indispensable weapon.
It is said that Deng Chao's performance at the end of "Burning Heart" with the injection of euthanasia burst, but I don't agree.
You can watch Pain and Glory after the last dose of narcotics.
Flashing back to the past, the fireworks are bright, eye-catching, and the childhood self is smiling. To accept surgery is to accept changes. It is not the tumor that is removed, but the decadence and depression of the past.
This passage echoes the scalpel in the swimming pool at the beginning of the film.
Fireworks are easy to cold, and confidence lasts forever. The face is easy to change, but the temperament is hard to change. The director's career restarted after a dose of narcotics.
Finally, let's talk about the end of the movie.
With the stretching of the lens, the staff who raised the pole to radio were exposed, and then the director called the card.
The routine of the play within the play, the setting is clever and natural, which shortens the distance between the memory and the real scene. The slightly dazzling and gimmicky structure is the main reason why I don't like this movie so much.
Whenever a director's autobiographical film is made, the shadow of "Eight and a Half" cannot be escaped. There are also a few obvious tribute shots in this one.
I have only watched eight of Pedro Almodóvar's films. The director is one of the most important directors in the Spanish film industry. I will make a general review after all the films are finished.
In any case, "Pain and Glory" is a rare film, a work that won the Palme d'Or without controversy.
Similarly, it is also an important alternative for your selection of the top ten movies of the year.
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