Strange Way of Life (2023): Almodóvar’s First Western

Pedro Almodóvar has a new film coming out: Strange Way of Life.  And yessiree, for his second English language movie, he has made a Western - a genre that has long fascinated him. Unlike a lot of the iconic westerns Almodóvar says he admires, this new project is not animated by themes such as manifest destiny in a rapidly expanding 19th century America or the Indian Wars or the cattlemen versus sheep rancher feuds. It does not depict the encroachment of feminizing civilization on a wildly libertarian Western landscape of ruggedly self-reliant men, epitomized by the (largely mythical) American cowboy. 

Nor is the new picture much interested in depicting the reality of the American west, wild or otherwise.  Rather, Strange Way of Life is an homage to a cinematic genre of American Westerns. (But not, Almodóvar wants us to know, to spaghetti westerns like Sergio Leone’s celebrated trilogy A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), A Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good The Bad And The Ugly (1966) and their numerous European progeny.) 

This is not to say that the new movie looks or feels fake. The costuming, the horses, the dust, and all the accoutrements of a real western are there.  Everything has been meticulously researched, as is Almodóvar’s practice; it’s just that the research consisted not of pouring over memoirs or old photographs, but rather of watching scores of classic westerns, by the likes of Howard Hawkes, John Ford, Anthony Mann, Sam Peckinpah, Robert Aldrich, Raoul Walsh, and so forth.  Interestingly, the town where the action takes place is the very set initially built in Southern Spain (Almeria) sixty years ago for those Sergio Leone man-with-no-name films – except that with fifty years of aging, the set looks more authentically OLD West now than it did back in the day

The story, set in 1910, stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as two old, fiftyish chums who come together after not seeing one another for twenty-five years. Back in the day they were guns for hire. Now Hawke’s character, Jake, is the town sheriff; while Pascal‘s, Silva, is a rancher living far away across “the desert”. Silva has just ridden across said desert to see Jake. Now, when the two men meet, their past time together is very much on their minds. But also, as we might expect, the two have very different lives now, along with which they carry different agendas. 

Jake has just learned that his brother’s widow – whom he had sworn to his dying brother to protect – has been murdered. The primary suspect is a young man - not so coincidentally, Silva’s ne’re-do-well son - with whom she had recently been having an affair. There's even an eyewitness.  It’s Jake’s professional and moral duty to apprehend the suspect; and although Silva claims no ulterior motive for his journey, he has come to dissuade Jake, so as to save his son. 

The story has the kind of quandaries to it that naturally would attract a director like Almodóvar, but, of course, there is also a definite Almodóvar twist to it, rooted in the two men’s past relationship. On the evening that Silva arrives, Jake embraces him, cooks him a nice dinner, and then takes him to bed, where they make love. As we learn, their past relationship was a passionate one, and even two and a half decades later, the passion persists. The next morning, however, Jake is all business, to Silva’s dismay. Theirs is a primal, seemingly irreconcilable conflict. How it resolves is classic western, except … perhaps not quite.

As we’d expect from Hawke and Pascal, the performances are nuanced and wonderful. As we’d expect from Almodóvar and his frequent collaborator, cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, the photography is first rate, as is the set design, art direction, and such-like. This may be a good place to advise you that Strange Way of Life does not contain graphic depictions of sex.

Almodóvar has noted that most westerns – with only a few exceptions, most notably Johnny Guitar (1954) starring Joan Crawford - are almost exclusively male focused, with women as secondary characters, if they are featured at all. The result, when there is more than one clear lead, is a not so hidden homoeroticism, even though the characters never acknowledge this. Regarding Strange Way of Life, Almodóvar says that his intention was “to give voice to these two middle-aged queer men, who traditionally have remained silent in a genre like the western.” He adds, “I was attracted by the idea of breaking that silence.”  He acknowledges that Brokeback Mountain (2005 ) by Ang Lee is about two men who love each other and do talk about it but, although they wear cowboy hats, they are shepherds, not cowboys; and  the story is set in more contemporary times so, for Almodóvar, that film is not really in the western genre. 

The bottom line is that this film is lovely. In fact, I really had only one problem with Strange Way of Life. It was too short! Although I knew the length of the movie going in (thirty minutes), when the credits began to roll – in classic Western red technicolor font – I nevertheless felt disappointed. I wrote myself a note: “There was a lot of meat on that bone, and we only got a morsel.” 

It seems that Almodovar is interested in making a feature length English language film in the near future and has chosen to start small. In fact, his only other English language production, 2020’s The Human Voice, also runs just thirty minutes. That film, an adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1930 play of the same title, stars Tilda Swinton as a woman waiting and desperately hoping – futilely, so it appears - for the return of a lover, who has abandoned her. Unlike Strange Way of Life, there are no other actors (discounting a dog, “Dash”); and the artifice of the piece – on a set constructed inside a cavernous warehouse - is intentionally revealed. Nevertheless, Swinton gives a scorching, bravura, devastating must-see performance.

Both of these short films, Strange Way of Life and The Human Voice  will be commercially released in theaters, as a package set so to speak, later this week on October 4th in New York and L.A. and then on October 6th nationwide. See below for details.  If you are a fan of Almodóvar and/or the actors Hawke, Pascal and Swinton, you’ll want to check them out. 

Each film has a run time of 30 minutes. 

Grade (for each, together and individually): A-  

Opening in theaters October 4, 2023 in New York City and L.A.; opening nationwide on October 6, 2023. In Northern California, both films will be screening at the AMC Kabuki in S.F., Rialto Cinemas in Berkeley, 3Below Theaters and AMC Saratoga 14 in San Jose, and the Tower Theater in Sacramento. Click this link to find showtimes and a theater near you.