Film analysis | Parallel Mothers: Of war, loss, trauma, and womanhood - Hindustan Times
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Film analysis | Parallel Mothers: Of war, loss, trauma, and womanhood

Mar 24, 2022 04:20 PM IST

Madres Paralelas is a film not only about a shared experience of motherhood but also refers to the parallels between mothers across generations, who are tied together by a shared tragedy of loss — the loss of their husbands and sons to war.

Historians, feminists, and scholars at large explain that it is on the bodies of women that wars are waged and nation-states drawn. Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres Paralelas (Parallel Mothers) documents this as he intertwines the making of the Spanish democratic State, based on its fascist past, with the narrative of womanhood, specifically the travails of motherhood. 

Little did Almodóvar know, when he began directing this film that it would resonate with contemporary global politics. (Screengrab) PREMIUM
Little did Almodóvar know, when he began directing this film that it would resonate with contemporary global politics. (Screengrab)

Almodóvar’s oeuvre centres on human experiences of desire and tragedy, which he captures not just in emotional and mental forms but also in absolute physical form. Body, then, is an integral part of his films, as also in his 2011 masterpiece, The Skin I live in. Madres Paralelas too focuses on the body and its interlinkages with traumas in the context of familial complications and politics of war and disappearances. He explores the vicissitudes of motherhood­­, as experienced by the body of women and their emotions of birthing and rearing, along with digging deep into the traumas of war as experienced in the search of lost bodies in the unmarked graves of the Spanish civil war. 

At one level, this film is a celebration of single mothers and female bonds and friendships, told in the stories of two protagonists: Janis (Penélope Cruz), a photographer in her late 30s, and Ana (Milena Smit), in her early 20s who is on a path of self-discovery. They meet each other in a maternity ward, whilst simultaneously entering unplanned motherhood. From there on, their lives are entangled, with the melodrama of baby swap, a shared experience of birthing, death, loss, sacrifice, and fighting demons of familial pasts — Janis is on a mission to find her great-grandfather’s grave and Ana is dealing with a troubled relationship with her parents. Amid all this, they find support in each other as friends, mothers, and lovers. 

This film is not only about a shared experience of motherhood between Janis and Ana but also refers to the parallels between mothers across generations, who are tied together by a shared tragedy of loss — the loss of their husbands and sons to war. In one scene, Janis says that by being a single mother she is simply following her family tradition, as her mother and grandmother were single mothers too. In this way, Almodóvar brings attention to the cyclical nature of time by showing how the past, present and future are intertwined; of how generations of women feel the pains of loss and sacrifice.

What is remarkable about this film is that it meanders the themes of the political (fascism, war, mass killings) and the personal (motherhood, betrayal, mistrust and passion), pulling us back and forth in time, by invoking the grammar of war (its weapons and traumas) in the narratives of the two protagonists. We see how Janis directly confronts the tragedy of the Spanish civil war, in a quest to discover the body of her great-grandfather, who, like many men was forced to dig his own grave and buried in it by Francoists. 

In this quest, she takes the help of Arturo (Israel Elejalde), an anthropologist, who as it turns out, also becomes the father of her child, forming another entangled intimacy. Against this backdrop, she is also confronting the loss of her child, a process eerily similar to the discovery of her great-grandfather’s body, as she takes swabs to establish maternity, attempts to ‘disappear’ by changing her phone number, and finally confronts her reality by bringing Ana back into her life. Ana is confronting her experience of violence (rape: Another weapon of war), and the loss and discovery of her child, which shapes her journey of womanhood.

Another way in which the traumas of war and personal lives have been brought together is by focussing on the place of lies and secrets both in war and intimate relationships. Janis lies to Ana about Celine (Ana’s biological daughter) in the same way that governments lie to civilians about the true extent of tragedies and their gruesome pasts. This film also asserts the importance of unearthing these secrets and lies. In its closing scene, women from Janis’ ancestral village gather around the finally unearthed grave, holding photographs of men whose skeletons lie below. It was a moment of reckoning and closure, allowing women and nations to move forward.

Madres Paralelas is yet another masterpiece by Almodóvar about the haunting of pasts, desires, intimacies, and complicated families. With his signature style of close-ups, we see the raw emotions of his female leads, further enabled by Cruz’s spectacular performance that brings out warmth and vulnerabilities of women (she’s nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars), all delivered in the backdrop of a Hitchcock-style capturing score (the film is also nominated for Best Original Score). Madres Paralelas is equally a story of traumas of loss and pursuits of hope, tragedies and optimism.

Little did Almodóvar know, when he began directing this film that it would resonate with contemporary global politics. Perhaps leaders of the world should watch this film and spare the future of yet another tragic past, which will haunt us for generations to come. 

Parul Bhandari is a sociologist and author of Matchmaking in Middle Class India: Beyond Arranged and Love Marriage

The views expressed are personal

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