Biutiful by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a brilliant film. Made by the Mexican director who gave us Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel, it was one of the many jewels of the 12th Mumbai Film Festival. It socked me in the solar plexus and I didn’t want to see another film that evening. It has many outstanding merits, chiefly Javier Bardem, whose extraordinarily compelling performance won him Best Actor at Cannes. And for all his jowly middle age, stubble and lowlife persona, he is shamelessly sexy in a way only unreliable men can be. Biutiful is a slow-burn, brooding film, yet incandescent (the title is how Bardem’s daughter spells beautiful).
Mainly, Biutiful is a reverie on death. Both sides of it--and the fluid interaction between life and death. Above all, it is about how the living are dying in various degrees. Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is dying of cancer, he carries messages from the dead, he kills immigrant labourers, he exhumes his father’s corpse to sell its niche space for cash. While the narrative is executed with great sophistication, the screenplay by Inarritu and two others is melodramatic masala that would make Karan Johar blush. Javier is a single dad bringing up two adorable kids, getting by running an illegal immigrants racket in Barcelona, having skirmishes with his manic-depressive ex-wife Marambra (Maricel Alvarez in a volatile performance)—and he’s dying. When he’s arrested, he must rely on Marambra to take care of the kids--but she’s in therapy, and also screwing Javier’s own brother Tito, who runs a whorehouse. It makes Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham-cum-We are Family look like pureed baby food. When Javier can only rely on illegal Chinese or African immigrants to take responsibility for the future of his children, the film suggests that the West needs Asians and Africans not merely for cheap labour, but really to save their souls.
Rodrigo Prieto’s powerfully atmospheric photography, limned in dark blue, transforms an effervescent city like Barcelona into a brooding purgatory, with a bravura sequence in which the cops bust an illegal immigrant vendor racket on the streets. Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla’s music is evocatively enriching. The buzz at the Mumbai Film Festival is that the film will be released in India soon—there’s hope for this country yet!
By Meenakshi Shedde
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