Talking about Volver, Almodóvar has said, "Ya lo dijo Sartre mejor que yo: el más allá está en el más acá." And we know that he first met Carmen Maura (who studied philosophy) in the years of the Movida Madrileña when they were working on a theatre production of Sartre's Les Mains Sales. So I feel justified in talking about the deep influence of Sartre on Almodóvar's thought and creativity.
I have no evidence of Almodóvar referring to Proust, so I am perfectly happy to accept that this is my own personal lens, when I see Proustian characters and philosophy emerging in Almodóvar's films.
A brief summary of Proust and Sartre's ideas, and you may well start seeing the parallels in Almodóvar's work for yourself:
Proust was a French novelist writing about the period before and just after the First World War. His main concern is with death. Fear of death - his own and of his loved ones. Death and its influence on life. A numbing influence where the habits of society and the expectations of social class act as an anesthetic to avoid confronting too much reality. This anesthesia takes over the life of Proust's protagonist Marcel, but slowly he has glimpses of salvation through the aesthetic. As a deliberate antidote to the anesthetic: Music and art offer moments of true being and experience free from the numbing fear of death and habit. In Marcel's case this is famously through a kind of synesthesia, where smell and memory and art and music come together to provide liberation. And for Proust, the artistic act of writing the novel brings meaning to his life and the time he has lived through. Anesthetic, the aesthetic, and synesthesia. Neat. Except it took a seven volume novel to get there.
Sartre was a French philosopher writing in the middle years of the twentieth century. He is most known for exploring phenomenology and existentialism. Both of these are found in Almodóvar's work. Phenomenology is the idea that we cannot perceive the universe directly. All our understanding is mediated by our senses and our concepts. This leads Sartre on the one hand to the idea of the absurd. And on the other hand to existentialism. The absurd universe is a universe without meaning. For Sartre's protagonists this can be nauseating and disorientating. A turgid world of fog and mud and tides. For other writers such as Robbe-Grillet the absurd universe can be rich and full of shapes, sounds and colours to experience and explore. But always at arm's length, without being able to find meaning. Robbe-Grillet also strayed into Almodóvar's realm of cinema, with his film L'année dernière à Marienbad. But I digress.
Phenomenology and the absurd lead on to existentialism. If the universe itself is not directly perceivable or conceivable, then the act of perception and conceptualisation is a creative act. It is humans who create the meaning. Meaning for the universe and meaning for their own life.
Existentialism as a philosophy is almost redundant for us because we take it for granted. We believe without question that through our actions we become "who we are." We don't believe that we have an essence or an identity which determines how we act.
Maybe for Almodóvar, growing up under Franco and educated in a religious school, the freedom of Madrid in the 70s made existentialism suddenly very real. Artistic, political, religious, personal, sexual freedom. And maybe if his films often focus on women, perhaps that isn't an particular interest in women, but a realisation that if you want to study humans and their struggle for freedom and for authenticity, then in our society, it's in women's lives that this can best be studied.
And for Sartre and for Almodóvar, existential freedom is a responsibility as much as a right. We have the responsibility for our own actions and through those actions, for the person we become and the life we live. Authenticity is a theme Almodóvar takes on from Sartre.
In Todo sobre mi Madre, Almodóvar parodies this philosophy in Agrado's speech in the theatre, talking about how her implants and surgery have made her more authentic. "Porque una es más auténtica cuanto más se parece a lo que ha soñado de sí misma."
Todo sobre mi Madre and Volver are a pair of films both trying to answer the same question. If we and our loved ones are going to die, what is the point of making such an effort to live and act authentically? Both films set up a situation where a female protagonist's life has collapsed after tragedy. We see them attempt to rebuild their life and Almodóvar attempt to answer the question as to why it is so important to bother.
But before we get to that, and if you are studying Volver for A Level then that might be important, I am going to again digress.
Firstly to quickly look at the idea of Almodóvar's films being a petri-dish for a philosophical idea. Take Hable con Ella. This film is clearly not built around plot or character. It is taking a philosophical idea and seeing how it plays out. If there is no god and therefore no absolute morality, then how do we know what is right or wrong? Perhaps through our intentions or the outcomes of our actions? Almodóvar sets up a situation where a character commits an act that all of us would agree is horrific. But with maybe good intentions. And with a positive outcome. Do we condemn him?
If Almodóvar condemns Benigno, it is actually on existentialist grounds. Benigno abdicates responsibility for his own live. He tries to live his life through others: he wants to be the woman on the balcony in the picture on the cover of Marco's book. He wants to lose himself inside someone else like the hero in the Incredible Shrinking Lover. The film is one big philosophical experiment. Which Almodóvar leaves unresolved, allowing the works of art that frame the beginning and end of the film to carry the moral resolution. Yes. He submits his philosophy homework through the medium of modern dance.
Secondly, what happened to phenomenology in Almodóvar's films? This is manifested in his love of layers of fiction upon fiction. Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios is a great example. The first thing we see looks like a terrible cheap film set. It is only later that we find out it is a model of Pepa's apartment building given to her by the estate agent (played not by an actor but by Almodóvar's own brother). We see a film of some film, we see Pepa through her own glasses. We are one step away from being able to see reality as it is. The universe is always mediated.
Almodóvar takes this into the plot. Throughout the film, messages go astray, Iván dumps Pepa through a song playing on a record, she speaks to him through the dialogue of a film they are dubbing, on a phone message... never directly. And in another incursion into French film and literature, the whole thing is paralleled by Jean Cocteau's La Voix Humaine.
And in the plot, the overlap between phenomenology and existentialism happens. Pepa alternates between living a life dependent on a man, and a life that she takes control of. Famously reflected in the alternation between blue and red. A tension, a conflict, between blue of inauthenticity and the red of an authentic life. Played out against the background of the green of the biological cycle of life and death.
Of course the same three colours, along with a white of hospitals and nothingness, can be seen in other Almodóvar films, in particular Hable con Ella.
But it's the ending of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, seemingly low key, which is going to be important to look at before we can come back to the pair of Todo sobre mi Madre and Volver.
Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios just seems to stop. After all the madcap action, the credits roll as two women talk on a balcony. We can't even hear what they are saying.
This, for Almodóvar is the most important thing. Two women, wearing red, who have just discovered they don't need a man to be themselves. Talking. Telling each other what they haven't told anyone else. Heart to heart. The human voice.
Now we are ready for Todo sobre mi Madre and Volver.
Both films are about a woman whose life has been destroyed and who has to rebuild it. In Todo sobre mi Madre, Manuela's son Esteban is killed in an accident before she can tell him the truth about his father. She has to confront her past and rebuild her life. The film is full of characters acting, forging, pretending. Manuela is the strongest of the group of women, but Almodóvar's burning question is why bother building an authentic life if death will destroy it. And the ending is unconvincing. There are clear clues that the ending is not authentic. The AVE to Barcelona did not yet exist. A baby neutralising the HIV virus had not yet happened. The Argentinian General Videla had not yet been imprisoned. And the unconvincing happy ending for Manuela is not what the original synopsis envisaged. In the original synopsis, Almodóvar had Manuela telling the young Esteban the truth she never managed to tell her first son. Heart to heart. The human voice.
The reason Almodóvar couldn't carry off the ending he wanted, was because he couldn't answer the question about death. Which is why Volver is the pair of Todo sobre mi Madre and answers the question.
Talking of Volver, Almodóvar said:
Tengo la impresión, y espero que no sea un sentimiento pasajero, de que he conseguido encajar una pieza (cuyo desajuste, a lo largo de mi vida, me ha provocado mucho dolor y ansiedad, diría incluso que en los últimos años había deteriorado mi existencia, dramatizándola más de la cuenta). La pieza a la que me refiero es «la muerte»; no sólo la mía y la de mis seres queridos, sino la desaparición implacable de todo lo que está vivo.
So if we are studying Volver, how has he done this, what does it have to do with Sartre or Proust, and what is the answer to the question?
Answers in Part Two...
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