A trademark of Mexican
director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s body of work is a lingering feeling of
melancholy, unresolved sadness, that while running through each story never
becomes the predominant tone. In other words, on paper it may be depressing,
but in practice it is something somehow more hopeful.
Case in point is his 2010
drama Biutiful, an expansive personal story following the final days of Uxbal
(Javier Bardem), a Catalan single father to two children of small means, resorting to
petty criminality and fixing with his brother, as well as occasional work as a
psychic, in order to make ends meet. His already Spartan life is given an
expiration date when he is diagnosed with untreatable prostate cancer, while
the ugly side of his profession rears its head with a pair of tragedies
lumbering more guilt on his shoulders. Overburdened and facing mortality, Uxbal
must bring his affairs to a close and insure his family will live on beyond his
passing.
Playing out more like a novel
than a motion picture, Biutiful not only gives a warts and all character study
for a desperate, conflicted man but also goes into literal depths with those
around him. This includes rounded portrayals for his duplicitous brother Tito
(Eduard Fernandez), the Chinese sweat shop owners (Taisheng Chen & Jin Luo)
who Uxbal is in coercion with, an illegal immigrant couple (Cheikh Ndiyae &
Diaryatou Daff) from Senegal
doubling as family friends, and the protagonist’s estranged, bi-polar wife
Marambra (Maricel Alvarez).
Subplots that in most films
would serve as quick cut conflicts for the anti hero are here explored for what
they are, unsavory slices of life aimed at the film’s focus of fractured,
un-glossed humanity. While the flip side of this immersive depth and detail is a
slow, contemplative pace, it also serves as a looking glass perspective on the
kaleidoscope existence of one man’s life. Uxbal, while far from an admirable
subject, is not judged by the film’s story but presented as is he is,
objectively and intimately.
Providing sympathy for a
morally ambiguous character isn’t a cheap process by exploiting the presence of
his two young children (played with aplomb by Hanaa Bouchaib & Guillermo
Estrella), but rather with a refreshing honesty and, above all else, a wonderful
central performance by Javier Bardem, who received his second Oscar nod for his
meticulous and committed turn. Engaging and interesting, his Uxbal is totally
authentic as a real man facing very real problems with all the strength and
inner inspiration he can muster.
He’s backed by the uniformly
superb cast, each underplayed with suitable restraint and subtlety, with the
exception of the appropriately nuclear Maricel Alvarez, who’s own inner
conflict is portrayed as damaging but not irredeemable. Redemption itself plays
a part in the film’s subtext, but is kept there firmly by Inarritu’s close
control of the narrative’s direction. This is not a heart string pulling weep
fest aimed at cheap sentimentality, and delivers its emotional power through
turn of event and not exploitation.
While this does mean a degree
of dissonance in viewing, a barrier between audience and characters, it also
respects said viewer’s intelligence and moral mileage sufficiently to let you
present your own conclusions, whether they be as cold or empathetic. Similarly,
certain story points are presented but not milked, such as Uxbal’s apparently
legitimate ability to speak with the dead, a crux that could easily have been
the film’s major focus. These are all strands, in essence, towards one modest
but compelling tapestry.
It is a tapestry, in fact,
which doesn’t simply dump you into the doom and gloom that would seem logical,
but instead somewhat closer to a state the title misspells. Fully atoning for
one’s misdeeds may not be possible, but shelving one’s pain for the happiness
of those more important and averting the sins of the past really is a
redemption worthy of hoping for. And, with Bardem in this kind of form, Biutiful is a
tale worthy of telling, and well worthy of watching.
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment