Biutiful (2010)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on January 30, 2011 @ tonymacklin.net.

Biutiful is a harrowing, battering experience at the movies. Although titled with a word scrawled by a child on her drawing, the movie is steeped in ugliness.

In Biutiful, Mexican director/writer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (with co-writers Armando Bo and Nicolas Giacobone) concocts a melting pot of exploiters and the exploited in a toxic mix.

Crass, glittering hedonists dance in a strip club while poverty-stricken illegal Chinese immigrants are lying in an airless room.

These immigrants are in Barcelona to make cheap rip-off purses that are hawked on the streets by Senegalese, who also sell drugs.

In this realm of lowlifes -- high and low -- Uxbal (Javier Bardem) tries to make his way as a middleman between corrupt cops, corrupt construction managers, and the flotsam and jetsam of humanity.

Uxbal learns he has cancer which will be fatal. How does one create order in a world of disorder? How can Uxbal fend for his two sweet children after he is gone?

Uxbal has a shred of decency, but the shred is unraveled.

His wife Maramba (Marciel Alvarez) is bipolar, struggling for normalcy against addiction. She can't stop wanting to have "fun," which is destructive. Some of the fun comes with Tito (Eduard Fernandez), the selfish brother of Uxbal.

Is one of the morals of Biutiful that lowlifes can have cute children? The two children of Uxbal and Maramba -- Ana (Hanna Boochaib) and Mateo (Guillermo Estrella) -- still have innocence, though they have to deal with damaging reality.

But have no fear. Inarritu knows audiences want hope, so he ultimately enlists a Sengalese Madonna ex Machina to try to redeem his dire vision.

Is Biutiful hallucinatory? Uxbal has the "gift" of talking to the dead, and he sells their supposed last words to the bereaved. Nice guy.

He himself talks with his long-deceased father in a cold, distant, snowy environment.

I swear in one scene I saw Uxbal wearing an Ocean City, N.J. sweatshirt. Talk about weird product placement. Since I spent many summers in Ocean City, maybe I hallucinated.

Biutiful is that kind of film -- dream, nightmare. What is real? What is out of place? What has fate decreed?

Was I hallucinating? Uxbal sees a dead owl. I see a sweatshirt. Inarritu has created chaos. Displacement and disorder.

Inarritu -- greatly aided by the artful cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto -- creates compelling images: human beings are like ants crawling on glass. A beautiful owl lies dead in the snow.

And they use Bardem's face as a canvas -- glistening with perspiration and character. He is blasé, anxious, glum, conniving, and desperate.

Often silent, Bardem's face is the visage of humanity in a world of struggle and failure.