Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful, movie review by Travis Hedge Coke

Starring Javier Bardem as a seriously damaged, dying, and lifelong criminal trying to do right by himself and his children, Biutiful is as cruel a sentimental film as can be. It wants to be nice, it drives its audience to want the world these characters inhabit to be nice, if only for awhile, but it rarely is. If not the cruelty of reality, the harshness of need, than the weight of guilt, the acid of guilt gets into everything and destroys any pure hope.

And, it it for that reason that it should be watched without ever hitting pause.

Biutiful is as terminally and centrally damaged as its title. “Biutiful” itself, the misspelling, comes from Bardem's character, Uxbal, attempting to help his daughter with her English homework, and instead revealing his own ignorance and inadvertently passing it down to that daughter. We all probably pass as much of our missteps and ignorance to the next generation, just as we are like Uxbal in his flawed evaluation of those around him from his boss to his brother, seeing our hopes as realities or our fears, but rarely acknowledging that both are part of the true existence. The movie is made more difficult for us to sit through because of its earnestness.

It is not that Uxbal does not love his children, his family, lover, and colleagues and acquaintances enough, or that he does not wish them all the best. The guilt that he has been raised in, occupied with, is so strong that his acts of love, his acts of aggressive optimism are greatly infected with that guilt, with a lack of perspective inspired by avoiding the pain and perhaps the lessening of love that such a perspective could bring. We love easier and more fully, perhaps, when we focus on parts of a person, moments in a situation, and not the entirety. We certainly sleep easier.

And, that is why the movie is worth watching, beyond the immense beauty of the cinematography, the thorough elegance of its pacing and direction, and the idiosyncratically lifelike acting, it is an anti-cathartic film. It is a movie that uses our hope for escapism and our desire for a righting of wrongs to move us in our own lives and not simply with a swell of music and cinematic cues to cheering.