On Monday, our last day of classes, we watched our last film of the semester. The question for this blogpost, our tenth and last, is the core question for this semester, and one that informs our wrapping up the semester: how does Juan Carlos Medina’s film Painless (2012) encompass the correspondences of Spain, cinema, fascism, and religiosity that we have considered all along the term? Choose two or three other films we have seen, and compare it to the way Medina’s film represent these correspondences.
Before May 12 at noon, please post your comment on this question.
Medina’s film Painless takes place both in 1931 during the Spanish Civil War and the modern-day, blurring the distinction between past and present and representing the continuous trauma of the fascist regime that has lasting consequences for generations after the war. The children in Painless are harshly torn from their families because of their genetic condition and locked up in an isolated ward, much like the Jewish children ripped from their homes and placed into concentration camps by the German fascists during the Holocaust. Dr. Carcedo attempts to rehabilitate the children and train them to be proper members of society, expressing the viewpoint of children as vulnerable figures who can molded to the images of the perfect Spanish citizen who fits within the idealized member of society who conforms to Catholic, Spanish, and Patriarchal expectations. In the case of Beningo, or later Berkano, who is entirely abused and conditioned to be a torturer for the government, the Spanish child’s growth into adulthood represents the fascist regime’s goal to use people for the benefit of the government and reflects the transfer of trauma from one generation to the next.
Pan’s Labyrinth similarly represents a child as the receptacle for the horrors of fascism. Ofelia escapes the trauma of her fascist stepfather and the death of her mother by seeking comfort in a fantasy dimension. Like the children in Painless, she is forced to leave the comfort of her home and move to an unfamiliar, isolated location. She is tempted by a Faun, who notably recounts the Catholic image of the satyr or devil, but he ends up leading her to her rightful throne in heaven which she claims only by maintaining Catholic virtues of honesty, righteousness, and purity. Ofelia escapes the repressive fascist regime only in death and through fantasy, expressing the idea of Spain “dreaming itself awake” as Ofelia finds freedom only in her dreamlike state where she is still aware of her unfortunate conditions but able to separate herself from them.
Similarly, in Cria Cuervos, Anna finds escape from her traumatic experiences by dreaming and hallucinating her dead mother. Like Painless, Cria Cuervos blurs the lines between past and present by showing Anna as an adult telling her story. She remembers her childhood unhappily, a rather uncommon representation in contrast to the usual expression of childhood as a joyous, happy time. Just as the adult Benigno and his son David represent the transfer of trauma from one generation to the next, the adult Anna expresses the same continuation of unhappy pasts. The trauma Anna experiences come directly from her home life and the unhealthy relationships and gender roles she and her sisters witness from the adults in her life, just as Ofelia witnesses the strenuous relationship between her pregnant mother and her abusive step-father.
Painless, Cria Cuervos, and Pan’s Labyrinth all feature children as the receptacle for the horrors of the fascist Spanish regime and express the transfer of trauma from one generation to the next. The three films also reflect the image of Spain “dreaming itself awake” as the children find refuge from their traumatic experiences in fantasy, hallucinations, and dreams where they are able to step outside of their unfortunate circumstances only through sleep and death.
As I have answered in one of my final papers, Painless is a cinematic representation of the corrosive nature of fascism, a nature which, unfortunately, overtook many institutions and facets of Spanish life, religiosity being a prime example of this. Franco and the nationalists understood the potency of religion as a method of control and sought to harness it for their own nefarious purposes, namely controlling the masses. Throughout the course of the film we see a religious institution, one that is supposedly working for the betterment of our souls, become a place that is supposedly working for the betterment of one’s body, namely the body/health of the young patients. Almost immediately the facility fails to meet the needs of its patients, and, in the presence of authoritarianism and fascism, degrades even further. The film essentially represents the failures of Catholicism to combat the encroachment of fascism, and its eventual compliance in the face of it. The film Entre Tiniebla, on the other hand, exists as both a medium that pokes fun at the Catholic Church, while simultaneously endorsing it by embracing it is core tenants, namely giving back to and supporting the poor and destitute. While the nuns of this film engage in behavior that the average Christian would describe as anything but pious, they are in some ways more pious than the catholic authority of, say, Francoist Spain. This is exemplified in their anti-authoritarian behavior, going directly against the tenants of fascism. Finally, the film The Day of the Beast represents a parody of how religiosity (specifically Catholicism) interacts with fascism. In Franco Spain, Catholic authorities sided with the fascists, condoning atrocities with flimsy logic to excuse said atrocities. In the film, the priest commits many sins, but under the ludicrous excuse of trying to kill the antichrist, parodying the rationale employed during Franco Spain
This aspect of this film that struck me the most was the way that fascism absorbs non-fascistic emblems and activities into its machinations. Through the medium of film, the aspects of temporality can be employed formally to express how fascism confuses the lives of people generations after the end of the Franco regime. In Painless, the doctors and nurses in the institution as well as Benigno get absorbed back into the fascist system purely for their own survival. They are forced to choose between working for the fascists and prolonging their death or being killed and tortured by the fascists immediately. Similarly to the doctor in Painless who sees working for the fascists as the only way to save the lives of the children and nurses, the executioner in El Verdugo uses the same logic. If he doesn’t do it someone else will and they might be more brutal and inhumane. In Benigno’s case he is an innocent who does not know what he is being involved in. He suffered a break from humanity and so he becomes absorbed into the fascist machine. In Viridiana, the titular character is pulled into a life of decadence and impurity, and by the end she does not feel worthy or returning to her old world. All three of these films bring to bear questions of innocence lost in the machinations of some larger force, and the difficult questions that one must ask in the face of fascism and brutality. While Viridiana and El Verdugo are more humorous and light in comparison with Painless, the themes of decay, confusion, and the arbitrary rules of religion and fascism come to the fore in all three films.