The Biutiful Bardem

The scene is stillness. The child’s hand wears diamond ring. Father and daughter lie in bed reminiscing about their heritage, a close family shot. It is a spot of peacefulness, but it is one of the only within Biutiful, the latest Inarritu film featuring our latest on-screen lady-killer, Javier Bardem.

Except in this film, Bardem isn’t so much lady-killer as nappy-wearer. An absorbing portrayal of life on Barcelona’s hard-worn streets, Biutiful tells the story of Uxbal (Bardem), an outwardly shady man with an inwardly pure heart. The ghetto which he calls home is a world-class example of crime, corruption, and exploitation; the feelings motioned by Uxbal, his broken family, and those around him are raw and real – the only motions they go through are the ones they need to stay alive.

Uxbal himself is rather hard to pin down. A peripheral gangster, an aid worker, a dedicated father, a businessman, and a man who takes money in exchange for parents to hear the dying words of their children are all true, but conflicting, descriptions. Uxbal lives on the edge of life and death, both metaphorically and physically. Death as an everyday facet in his low-decile neighbourhood is one factor; his mausoleum visits, accidental part in a mass death, and role as an orphan is another. Yet Uxbal, too, is dying. His perspective changes quite slowly after he discovers his own demise: his imminent death is just another fact of life, the burnt crust on his daily bread. It all seems very primal.

One of the things I find most Biutiful (mind the pun) about this film is, forecasted in its initial scenes, its stillness. There is no distracting, mind-numbing sound to go with it, the sound that blots out the humanity of a film and makes it some American circus blockbuster featuring Adam Sandler. Simplicity is beautiful, and this film knows it. I suppose what makes it intensely watchable (and actually quite captivating; you do find the time slipping away under you and your prerequisite popcorn) is that in itself, the film is actually so complex that its silence makes it profound, rather than boring. It is certainly one of those cinematic treats that take your mind hostage for some time afterwards.

 

It is as I write this that I realize the mentioning of the cast somehow seems secondary to the content. There are many characters, the most central (and they would have to be for a film on a family man) his family, and a couple of other families surrounding him. Uxbal is certainly not lacking in family drama or unhappiness, but it is the love and protection that he gives them which gives his definitely-not-nuclear family cohesion.

The sense of what he has lost in his own childhood adds metaphorical imagery that, like many other instances in the film, rotates and reappears to make sense of the intangible, the misunderstood, and the indecipherable. It is beautifully circular, like life itself, and carries its inconsistencies and ironies upon itself like the scars on a heart. Plus, if you want to add a little student good will into the mix, a course-related AUT fundraiser is showing this little magic-maker at Bridgeway Cinemas with a handy glass of wine. Watch it and you will see why Bardem won Best Actor at Cannes.