03449cam a22004218i 4500 23920727 BJBSDDR 20260218110148.0 ta 241113s2025 nyu b 001 0 eng 2024048166 9780231220040 (hardback) 0231220049 (hardback) 9780231563031 (ebook) 23920727 DLC eng rda DLC eng pcc PN 1998.3 M648p 2025 791.43/75 Miller, Jim (James), 1947- 43404 The passion of Pedro Almodóvar : a self-portrait in seven films / James Miller. New York : Columbia University Press, 2025. xi, 204 pages ; 23 cm. text txt rdacontent unmediated n rdamedia volume nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references and index. Volver -- Bad education -- Pepi, Luci, Bom and other girls on the heap -- The law of desire -- The flower of my secret -- Broken embraces -- Pain and glory -- Coda : Once upon a time in the counterculture. "James Miller became interested in Almodóvar when he realized that, like the author, he was a man of the Sixties, forged in that decade's global counterculture, and seriously pursuing his own quest for personal liberation; both author and filmmaker are fascinated with philosophy as a way of life and investigating key questions about the human condition. The Passion of Pedro Almódovar argues that the director's vision of freedom is rooted in surrealism, the philosophy of Sartre, and in a desire-oriented theory of wellbeing based on Jean Cocteau's theory of the ""surreal sex of beauty,"" which posited a third gender between the binary forms. Almodóvar is arguably the most important artist with a self-conscious interest in moral philosophy to have emerged from the global counterculture of the 1960s. His films, if taken in sequence, amount to a sustained struggle to understand, in his terms, the limits of moral autonomy and of nihilism and egotism. Like no other filmmaker before him, a generous interpretation of his oeuvre becomes increasingly difficult if one simply takes each movie as a freestanding entertainment rather than another chapter in the director's episodic and often revealing self-portrait. Collectively they provide an ongoing series of fictional alter egos, telling and retelling essential episodes in the story of his life, thinking about the past in the spirit of Proust but exploring the alternative lives he might have lived in the style of Pessoa, in this way learning more about who he is and what he might yet become. Espousing Whitman's "I contain multitudes," what may present superficially as sensationally beautiful storytelling turns out to communicate something simpler and more profound: one man's philosophy of life and the anguish behind his ongoing search for meaning."-- Provided by publisher. Almodóvar, Pedro Criticism and interpretation. Almodóvar, Pedro, 1949- Crítica e interpretación 19894 Directores de cine españoles 47128 Directores y productores de cine Crítica e interpretación 12661 7 cbc orignew 1 ecip 20 y-gencatlg lcc BK 124258 124258 0 0 lcc 0 0 HU BJB BJB HU 2025-07-16 0 PN 1998.3 M648p 2025 00000194764 2025-07-16 16:58:00 1 2025-07-16 BK