Broken Embraces

This whole film is about collisions: collisions of characters and collisions of trends, philosophies and ideas. It is unavoidable that characters are going to reach, or even surpass, their limits to achieve their goals, which according to them are right. Of course, the consequences are that they going to act morally against some values, not only of the others but also against themselves! Lying, pretending or even hiding are all forms of being wronged towards someone else. Being wronged is always immoral if the character doesn’t admit it. But since he admits so then variations about how wronged was he of the situation arouse. In “Broken Embraces” by Pedro Almodóvar the characters wronged others and some are going even further about wronged themselves. Others do it on purpose, others by mistake. Some because they are simply “mean”, others in order to achieve their own personal goals ignoring the well-being of the others. What all of them though have in common is that they are all doomed to their actions, either good or bad that brings the entire twist at the end of the movie.

Mateo belongs seemed to be Spanish intellectual, leaving in Madrid as a famous director and scriptwriter. Mateo is stripped of his career because he decides to deviate from his style of movies being drama to a comedy. This single act puts him in grave danger, although he is not doomed by any staggering outcome yet to come. After deciding that he will make a comedy it is time for the cast to be listed. Then a decisive moment for the movie comes where he chooses Lena, not many things known about her, clearly sparked by her outside beauty. He claims to be in an entire love with Lena; though that is nothing more than a sexual relationship. He doesn’t seem to enjoy...

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...finish, even if you do them blindly”.

On the whole, the case here that people were wronged was mostly betrayal: betrayal to others not only because of unnecessary hatred like Ernesto’s but because of different approaches in life. There was a variety from a typical hedonistic life like Lena’s to a morally correct one like Ray X’s. The choices being all different lead to clashes. As Milan Kundera once said: “When the dreams conflict, clashes occur…” The same happened to our movie. Different dreams of the characters created different conditions for the characters to achieve them. These conditions, in order to be met, had some sacrifices. These sacrifices though, were not always morally correct towards others creating an instability that others couldn’t tolerate. This intolerance was enough for creating wronged situations towards others and a whole cycle of clashes.