Biutiful

Biutiful

148 Minutes

Unlike his cohorts Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu has yet to make an out-and-out Hollywood blockbuster. Yes, he’s working with actors such as Sean Penn and Brad Pitt since breaking out with his indie hit Amores Perros, but 21 Grams and Babel are nothing compared to installments of the Blade and Harry Potter series. But with Biutiful, González Iñárritu has directed his gloomiest and least cohesive film to date.

Gloomiest? From the guy who has made movies about dog fighting, heart transplants and worldwide, polyglot misery? Considering Biutiful is about a small-time hustler who is dying of prostate cancer and everyone around him is equally miserable, yeah, the film is probably the darkest in the Mexican director’s short oeuvre. Even Barcelona, known for its Gaudi architecture and vibrant life, is cast in a funereal pallor, as if González Iñárritu decided to go all Pedro Costa on us and create a city that is all underbelly.

Javier Bardem is Uxbal, the dying man who must come to grips with his demise while making preparations for his transition. He has put off going to the doctor for too long and the cancer has metastasized to the point where he is pissing blood. His wife Maramba (Maricel Álvarez) is a junkie who is no longer involved in raising their two young children, kids Uxbal must provide for despite his impending death.

Now here’s the shitty part: Uxbal makes his some of his money talking to the souls of the recently dead, allowing the living to communicate with the dead. González Iñárritu doesn’t completely confirm that Uxbal has otherworldly powers or that he is a huckster. Nothing is explained nor does it add anything to the story. Biutiful would have been quite fine without this added bit. Also crippling Biutiful is a side story of the Chinese men Uxbal works for and their tragic homosexual affair. Not only does this side plot add nothing to the film, it even detracts from the narrative so much that I wondered why no one advised González Iñárritu to edit it out.

Despite its shortcomings, Biutiful is worth seeing for Bardem’s performance alone. As the haunted Uxbal, the Spanish actor fills the screen with the same fierce energy he brought to films such as Before Night Falls and No Country for Old Men as the haunted Uxbal. Just when González Iñárritu’s films feels like it’s about to go off the rails (and it does numerous times) Bardem’s performance grounds the director’s overwrought tendencies with his intense performance.

Biutiful is also González Iñárritu’s first screenplay without collaborator Guillermo Arriaga, but you wouldn’t know it unless you read it somewhere. In their 21 Grams the title refers to the amount of weight the body loses when it gives up the ghost. Once again, González Iñárritu has decided to frame another film around a moribund protagonist. His message is clear if you look at his four films together: the human existence is a despondent one. Biutiful confirms González Iñárritu’s status as a miserablist, one who believes that everyone is blameworthy, no matter how pure your intentions. Then you die.

by David Harris