Pain and Glory

In evocative and understatedly emotional scenes, carried out with a mature grace by Banderas, we come to a connection of how we get where we are, and what holds us back from what we dream of becoming.

A surprise in all ways except its surpassing quality, Pain and Glory reveals master Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar forging dazzling new paths while being completely himself.

This is an especially personal work, anchored by the director’s on-off muse Antonio Banderas in perhaps his greatest performance and sweeps through the Spanish maestro’s recurrent themes: high melodrama and kitsch comedy, piety and carnal lust, sex and death, human pain and transcendent glory.

The gorgeous, perfect final shot of Pain and Glory — I might have gasped out loud — will make you feel glad to be alive, and in a movie theater.

It’s a deeply personal and very moving film, anchored by the best work of Antonio Banderas’ career.

Pain And Glory has are some beautiful passages ... What’s missing from the movie is any real sense of danger or subversion—qualities that used to basically define this once-radical filmmaker’s work.

It’s unlikely to be remembered with any great fondness by all but Almodovar diehards, its self-regarding inwardness suggesting that he’s struggling, as his hero is here, to find something new to say.

Es una impecable y maravillosa retrospección de Salvador Mallo (interpretado por Antonio Banderas), un retirado cineasta muy reconocido que se encuentra enfrentando su propio deterioro físico y emocional los cuales le impiden seguir dedicándose al cine ya que en sus propias palabras es una profesión muy demandante a nivel físico y mental. A lo largo de la cinta me topé con una serie de memorias y hechos del protagonista narrados de manera arrolladora e hipnótica que convierten a esta película en una obra maestra en todos los aspectos, a nivel técnico es fantástico, pero las actuaciones, los diálogos, la dirección y el lenguaje corporal son verdaderamente brutales, no soy aficionado al cine español pero en este caso cautivo todos mis sentidos llenando mi alma de cultura, pasión y emoción. Sin duda alguna esta película me ha dejado huella que nunca se podrá borrar.

I am going to go out on a limb and say this is actually Pedro Almodovar's best film. Possibly one of the best films I have ever seen. Why is it his best? Because it captures in its simplicity and bareness the sublime beauty of life as can only be viewed through the veil of the pain and suffering we must all endure to be able to experience that beauty at all. The film finds meaning in suffering in a believable fashion. I believe that there is no higher form of art than to speak to this simple personal truth which connects us all through the sincerity of one's own experience. And this film does speak truthfully and humbly to that very personal struggle each of us undertakes to find meaning. To the losses and the hurt but also the subtle joys in the trials and tribulations of life. And not only do we have important questions here, but important answers. Pedro Almodovar's story is not unique or special or different in any important way from many others that have been told, but it is astoundingly honest and simple and that is what makes this film so starkly beautiful. Bad Education dealt with childhood trauma and the consequences from repressed sexuality and internalized homophobia. Many will cite that film as Almodovar's **** this film felt so much more universal, wisened by age, and true to me. I have rarely been so emotionally affected by a film. Pain and Glory indeed; that is all that life is and nothing more.

This is the latest movie from a famous Spanish director Pedro Almadovar. Disclaimer: I never liked his movies in the past but I keep trying. This film is semi-autobiographical. I have a feeling that type of movies becomes a fashion. Last year it was Cuaron's "Roma", this year it's Almadovar's turn. This movie has everything: great actors (Antonio Benderas, Penelope Cruz to name just a few), excellent sound track, pleasant cinematography. But I never felt any empathy toward any character in the film. For the most part of it I was bored. I respect the craftsmanship but I did not enjoy it much. If you liked Almadovar's movies in the past, you will most likely enjoy this one as well. But it is definitely not my piece of cake. Consistently...

Despite a number of touching moments, fine performances by Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, some inventive cinematography, and a captivating soundtrack, this introspective character study never quite gels into a cohesive whole, feeling more like a series of random, mostly unrelated reflections than a fully finished and definitive work. Loosely based on the life of director Pedro Almodovar, this semi-autobiographical story about a filmmaker looking back on his life feels like it's going toward a destination at which it never quite arrives, despite a clever ending that provides a last-minute refreshing perspective on the work overall. I was disappointed, though, that the picture never quite led anywhere more meaningful or profound, despite a fervent hope that it would eventually do so. Fans of Almodovar's work will undoubtedly relish this love letter to his art and his audience (and some would say himself), but less ardent viewers of his films are likely to end up, as I have, seeing it as a generally inoffensive though ultimately lacking exercise. I'd be going too far if I were to call it self-indulgent, but there does seem to be a self-congratulatory element to it that overrides most anything else the film is trying to say.

(Mauro Lanari) In the category of self-referential, self-analytical and autobiographical art, I consider more interesting the comparison with other authors than those I found mentioned in the reviews at "Dolor y gloria". I didn't perceive it as an accomplished film, I didn't get the impression that Almodóvar wanted or knew how to transfigure his very personal material. The beginning with the chapters "geography" and above all "anatomy", an animated list of the various ailments of health, promised a form of Trierian reworking, powerfully ingenious, sarcastic to the limit of autoparody, but they are not color tones that belong to Pedro's palette. Another notorious director for the tormented quest to extend his own navel to the human condition is Moretti, and his best film is that "Caro diario" (1993) in which he has bound himself to a classical structure like the Wolffian one (the same present also in "Antichrist", 2009). Here instead we are close to a stream of consciousness, liberating and cathartic more for those who express it than for those who receive it. In other words, I have some difficulty in identifying myself with this type of report of an eccentrically trivial life, too subjective and too little objective.