As I look back over my life ...

“As I look back over my life
And I think things over
I can truly say that I’ve been blessed
I have a testimony”
- “Testimony” 

Reflecting on one’s own life can be many things – harrowing, enlightening, disappointing, uplifting … so many things … all at the same time. Pedro Almodovar, one of my favorite filmmakers, blatantly reflects on his life in “Pain and Glory.” It is a relatively sedate look at his childhood, sexual awakening, professional rivalries, failing health, the love of his life and his dwindling passion for his craft. 

 As I watched “Pain and Glory,” I couldn’t help but think about two other movies I love by two iconic European directors – Federico Fellini’s “8 ½” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries.” They, too, captured their lives, particularly their exasperation – recollections both wistful and regretful – as well as solace, in those films. 

 They are all about these men – European men, specifically – but that’s probably incidental … but about these men at a certain stage in life when they are reflective. 

 I’ll have to do some research on whether Bergman was reflecting on his own life with “Wild Strawberries,” but I think it was an exercise along those lines even if it wasn’t exactly autobiographical for him. He’s examining the present in the context of the past and seems more like he’s coming to a stage where he wants to help others avoid making mistakes he’s made. “8 ½” is more closely paralleled with “Pain and Glory” because “8 ½” is clearly autobiographical – an almost unbearably stylish meditation on Fellini’s life as a filmmaker and how he is dealing with the various pulls and ties and issues of his career and personal life and also how his past informed who he is. 

In “Pain and Glory,” Almodovar examines those same themes, looking at his life through the lens of his formative years. And just like the Fellini character in “8 ½,” Guido, Almodovar’s alter ego, Salvador, played by Antonio Banderas, in “Pain and Glory” is having trouble with the film he is trying to make. He struggles even to be creative, lacking the inspiration that used to come so easily. Salvador has essentially walked away from being a filmmaker. He is in the midst of a self-imposed hiatus where he hasn’t felt compelled to write anything to produce. He’s been in much pain dealing with health issues, but when he crosses paths with the estranged friend and actor who had been his most prominent collaborator, his world opens once again. 

 As in the other films I’m using for comparison, Almodovar looks back on his childhood quite a bit and reflects on how those moments shaped both his sexual awakening and his relationship with his parents and parental figures. I find these types of reflections poignant and beautiful. With “Wild Strawberries,” I was struck by how much the old man wanted to help these people in his life just by trying to steer them in ways that maybe he wouldn’t have when he was younger. And I guess that longing for youth, that longing for, in some cases, redemption, is hypnotic. Perhaps it’s not necessarily the longing for redemption. There’s the acceptance, and there’s also the seeking of a catharsis through these reflections. There’s beauty in wanting to take what life has given you and turn it into something valuable in some way even if it’s through your own epiphanies. 

 What I struggled with in “Pain and Glory” is that I wanted something more. As lovely as it was, I missed the longing that normally permeates his beautiful stories. You can feel it in everything from “Bad Education” to “Broken Embraces” to “Volver” … even “The Skin I Live In.” His characters are so vivid. Even when the circumstances around what they’re going through are extraordinary and preposterous and melodramatic, it’s still relatable. You still feel for these people, and I’m not quite sure how he does that. And with Fellini, it’s all so stylish, so visually engaging and cool with a palpable malaise, yet, again, still relatable. Even the scene that might be considered offensive – the male fantasy where he comes home to all these women – that’s a stereotype, but it was clearly on his mind. You want an artist to be truthful about how he feels and sees the world. You don’t want it to be sugar-coated or glossed with a politically correct brush because if it’s not real, if it’s not honest, it’s not art. So that was part of his fantasy, and you get it. Besides, it’s clear that even he can see that if such a fantasy became reality, it would not be sustainable. We all have lusts and desires and weaknesses, of course. Bergman gets in on the act in “Wild Strawberries,” too, although it is far more contemplative. For his lead character, an esteemed professor played Victor Sjostrom, it is interacting with exuberant and forlorn young adults that swings his mind back to regrets and, here’s that word again, longing. 

 The humanness of these explorations – this idea that you can reflect and mend – I think that’s part of the appeal of the three films I’ve targeted. Living to a point where you can reflect and mend is part of the appeal as well. It’s a search for meaning at a certain point, not that you’re not searching for meaning all the way through. It seems like for these men, they come to the end and think about these things. I don’t know whether women generally do that more throughout their lives. I think that might be the case, obviously no absolutes, but that might be the case.