Nervous breakdown in color : Metaphoric palette of Pedro Almodovar

Subversive and sexy, colorful and controversial, passionate and provocative Almodovar's world doesn't look like any other. The self-taught author has been recognized for decades as the initiator of the collapse of numerous taboos that have burdened Spanish society under the conventions. This is a break with the past in which one of the new ways of looking at freedom, the concept of life is awakened. Almodovar is the product of an awakened desire, which has long slept with the toxicity of totalitarianism. The main purpose is to show the spiritual revival, but after all the process of maturing the individual, purification from disappointment, numerous hopes, anxieties, it seems that the only thing left is the abyss, the opiate national hegemony of disillusion. This idealistic pontoon, inherent to the entire nation, is the line of the sociological phenomenon that Almodovar explores.

Madrid is the one who is tearing down the burden that urges actors to actively re-examine traditional moral values, calling into question the ethical sovereignty of the Spanish family, church and justice system. The city is a unique locus, it's a place of liberation of low passions, the epicenter of sexual liberation, such as some kind of Arcadia, in which all transformations are welcome, where you are free from rigid patriarchal tyranny and where through the aspirations and desires of the individual, we come to unravel the new national identity. Recognizable for its specific subjective realism, hardly genre-specific, Almodovar is walking along the incidentally thin border of pathos and humor. His discourse outlines distinctive boundaries among genres, forcing us to place this specific way of communication into the melodrama field. It's an inherent form of optical discovery of the world, which extends the sensitivity to so-called unseen spectra, revealing its creative subject, the aesthetic specificity of its expression.

While the metaphor in poetry seeks to clarify the concept and emotional closeness with the notion, in Almodovar films, color is a visual medium that "revives" the psyche, creating an autonomous structure of the world. By linking colors to characters, he layered himself the narrative process of action and modifies the color nomination, raising it to the stage of emotional performances.

The real world of colors here is the only authority, a cruciform artifact in the construction of the sarcasm, the illustration of a discursive language, determining our view of the world. The use of a palette of basic colors is a conscious choice of the author, which brings new symbolic meanings to the relation of man-color, contributes to encryption of the language of the film and penetration into the depth of the composition. Gradation sensation of specific vocabulary of colors, which are born in characters, help us to perceive the mysteries of our own being.

Creating an unprecedented symbiosis of kitsch and punk, sex and abstinence, linking two areas of visual arts and film (which is deepened by a particular gravity toward color artistic expression) he has created a distinct quality..

The world that he painted is covered by pastel melancholy, abandoned pregnant women, thieves, fraudsters, prostitutes, voyeurs. "His" women behave as if they don't know moral social restrictions, they are perfectly imperfect, irresistibly handsome, brutally sincere, childishly malicious. In this somnabular world of ugliness and imperfection of the human figure, in a powerful game of colored image, they were elevated to the archiepiece. Anecdote becomes a means by which to respond to essential life concerns, everything is reduced to the brink of dialogue, facial expression, laughter through tears that is manifested in the colorful background of magical chaos.

Note: This was my translation from Serbian to English from PULSE article ''Nervni slom u koloru, metaforična paleta Almodovarove retorike'' by S.Lokas

EXTERNAL LINKS

Pedro Almodóvar’s Obsessions (I): Red Color

Colour, Couches & Catholicism in Almodóvar’s Movies
https://amuse-i-d.vice.com/colour-couches-catholicism-in-almodovars-movies/