Episode 729 - Pain and Glory (2019)

Hi everyone!

We're back with another review from Jon-David, aka the Mafia Hairdresser, who is absolutely determined to pick up all our missing award nominees and winners from last year, including today's underhyped film, PAIN AND GLORY, featuring a commanding performance from Antonio Banderas. We're excited to get Jon-David's take on the film. Don't miss his recent reviews for MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL (Episode #713), THE CAVE (Episode #706), and RICHARD JEWELL (Episode #692). His promo will run before the review.

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Here we go!

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<< MAFIA HAIRDRESSER PROMO >>

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Hello, this Jon-David aka Mafia Hairdresser, the writer and performer of the podcast The Mafia Hairdresser Chronicles, a campy crime comedy based on my time working for a Hollywood cocaine trafficking couple in the 1980s.

Today's movie is PAIN AND GLORY (2019), written and directed by internationally-acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, and stars Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, Leonardo Sbaraglia, and Asier Etxeandia.

No spoilers.

PAIN AND GLORY stars Antonio Banderas as writer/director Salvador Mallo. The film opens to Mallo's memories of childhood, growing up poor with his mother, Jacinta (Penélope Cruz). As the story moves along, we see Salvador Mallo's physical pain as an adult, which makes you think he might be nearing the end of his career of writer/director.

Between the storylines of Antonio Banderas, as Mallo, rejecting the call to write and direct again (which is, figuratively, the breath of his life), and his romanticized flashbacks of Penélope Cruz raising him and molding him into the artist that he has become, you'll begin to notice how the real director of the film, Almodóvar, uses music, light, color, and even his actors to tell his story. You see, in the films of Pedro Almodóvar, the story is not only enjoyable and straightforward or complex, he is also commenting on the subject of his stories. In this film, PAIN AND GLORY, he is commenting on the PAIN his main character has to endure when he feels his GLORY days as a film director are over.

PAIN AND GLORY is rumored to be highly autobiographical and includes straight up tellings of Almodóvar's religious education and his family expectations that he would become a priest. Antonio Banderas, as the film director, has to address his own ego and the way he has gone through life soaking up lovers, friends, colors, and experiences, but not fully experiencing them. Only writing them and filming them.

I hope that when you see PAIN AND GLORY, you're with a group of friends who likes to view film and talk about them afterwards. This film is actually not just autobiographical, a story, or a portrait. It is a statement from Pedro Almodóvar. He is showing you the brushes, his tools in which he paints his stories with. Although the main character is a film director who suffers for his art, you will see his tortured contemplation of his past films, brilliantly played by Banderas, who tries to maintain relationships, at arm's length, to protect his own drug use.

Almodóvar, the openly gay director, loves to tell the public what he thinks. He loves to show you his opinions in his films, and PAIN AND GLORYis his conversation directly with his film fans. He is telling us that, as close to the truth about his life and demons that he can show you, it will never be enough or real enough. But that the pursuit of showing you is the best anyone can do. Filmmaking, to him, and his main character, is like "chasing the dragon", a term used by heroin users, also depicted in this film by Banderas, who suffers and strives to tell stories by making movies which only achieves him finite glory once his films are completed.

Both the use of Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz in this film, along with his use of color, is another example of how Almodóvar uses his favorite actors, commenting that they are one of the many tools to tell a story. Personally, I would particularly to like know what people who have seen this film think of Almodóvar's use of white, such as the cave-home dwelling his childhood main character grew up in, the stark white hospital scenes his grown up main character must endure, and what the use of whiteboards and the words "whitewash" mean in this film. Feel free to comment if you're listening. Or chat us up on Twitter or Instagram. I have my own opinions.

PAIN AND GLORY was nominated for a 92nd Best International Feature Film Academy Award. The writer director Pedro Almodóvar is already an Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film in 2000 for ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999), and Best Original Screenplay in 2003 for TALK TO HER (2002). Antonio Banderas won Best Actor at Cannes for his role in PA