The films directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu are never trivial. Viewers can always expect unique perspectives and original cinematic visions. ‘Biutiful‘ released on screens in 2010 is a good example. It is a realistic film with a strong social touch, perhaps the most political film of Iñárritu so far, addressing a theme, that of illegal immigrants, which would become a major subject of public interest only a few years later. At the same time, it is a film in which the fantastic and the supernatural play an important role. The film also contains naturalism and poetry, but shrouded in a gloomy vision, dominated by death. Death, however, is not necessarily a final, but only the end of a cycle. Others will follow after the screening is over. The hero of the film will accompany us for a while.
‘Biutiful‘ is the story of the last months of a man’s life, Uxbal (Javier Bardem) who is far from being a saint or an exemplary citizen. The story takes place in Barcelona, but the tourist part of the city, which many of us know, we only see in passing. The heroes of the film are immigrants (many of them illegal) from Africa or China, their exploiters from the underworld, corrupt police officers. Uxbal himself is a kind of intermediary and coordinator of the activity of illegal workshops in which Chinese immigrants work in abject conditions to manufacture the colored forgeries that African street vendors sell to tourists. His life is already burdened by a failed marriage and the care for his two children who grow up in a precarious material and moral atmosphere, when he is struck by the news that he is ill and that he came too late for treatment to save his life. This is a theme addressed in many other films, but the perspective is unique here, because Uxbal is already, perhaps since always in dialogue with death. He had never met his father, who had left Franco’s Spain before he was born and died in exile in Mexico, but his presence always accompanies him. He also has the power to communicate with the dead as long as their souls are still around the bodies that temporarily housed them. He gets his own support from a woman, a fortune teller who facilitates his dialogue with the other dimension. There is a super-reality beyond the reality described in the film and the boundaries between the two worlds are permeable for the film’s hero.
The film is undoubtedly dominated by the acting creation of Javier Bardem. His hero is a small mobster in a bad world, but within this social limitations he tries to help those around him. But his attempts generally fail and some of them end in tragedy. The events that the hero experiences are depressing, but still the film has a positive message, which derives precisely from the inner light, from the desire to do good against all adversity and the ugliness of the world. Perhaps it is precisely in the knowledge or belief that the universe is not limited by social conditions or geographical space, and not even by death, that Uxbal’s power lies. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu manages to create this impression of super-reality above or beyond a very cruel immediate reality, but the spectators must be attentive. They will find these fantastic elements in the symmetrical scenes that open and close the film or through visual details that occupy only one corner of the screen for a split second. The urban landscape is also part of a universe that extends far, far away, with landscapes filled by frozen forests or under a sky where flocks of birds live their own lives and cycles. ‘Biutiful‘ is not an easy movie to watch, the topics covered are heavy and painful, but there is also a lot of beauty and a dose of fantasy that is worth looking for and experiencing.