Biutiful

(also appears on oscarfrenzy.com)

Biutiful-- beautiful, misspelled. But ‘beautiful’ barely begins to describe this breathtaking film, which will undoubtedly receive an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It is not too much to say that within the film are all the components of life itself. The sublime and the profane, the worst and best of human behavior. . . . the hope and trust of illegal immigrants working in an airless room, the raw pornography against the pounding disco beat of a nightclub where naked women swarm like snakes in a pit, the sweet happiness in the shining eyes of a child, the fragile beauty seen in the swirling flight of starlings in the sky. The director Alejandro González Iñárritu (who also wrote the screenplay) is known for such ‘slice of life’ gritty movies as 21 Grams, Amores Perros and Babel, which he also wrote. In Biutiful, once again he shows us a segment of society that perhaps many of us would rather not see or know too much about. And yet we look, because we know we have to. It is a version of ourselves reflected. It takes us to the underworld, where getting through the day is a challenge and heaven and hell are as inexorably linked as our own reflections in the mirror are to our beings.

How to describe such a film? It’s the story of human struggle, love, and death--in all its manifestations. Javier Bardem plays Uxbal, a man caught in a downward spiral, trapped in his own hell and that of others in his sphere. Uxbal can speak to the dead and hear them as their souls leave the earth. A victim of the corruption of the world in which he lives, he seeks to escape the manacles that chain him to eternal damnation. His entire world is caving in on him. He tries to do good, but in the process causes a situation so horrific that no man could possibly survive it unscathed. Where is salvation for this man?

To say that Javier Bardem is brilliant in this role is like saying that Michelangelo did a great job with the Sistine Chapel. Words seem like nothing more than silly off-target darts being thrown at some evasive bullseye. What Bardem achieves in this role is true art. His role reveals such depth of character, such stature of soul and empathy that it is difficult to imagine he is actually able to do what he does. Cutting into himself with a ferocity, digging so deep with a determination that very few actors of his generation or any before him could achieve. The demands of the role are excruciating. There are no ‘easy’ scenes. Each one has levels and layers, often imperceptible to us until later when we remember what we saw before and understand.

There is a scene where Uxbal is talking to his father. We don’t know it’s his father, but what strikes us is the obvious love Uxbal feels for the man. How does Bardem reveal that exactly? With a look? The tone of his voice? A lingering stare? Perhaps none of these. It is the magic of Bardem’s performance. That’s all we really know. Where the character has taken over the man who plays him. As if Bardem is but an instrument manifesting what the character Uxbal tells him to do.

Poetry in the gutter. Vulgarity revered and disemboweled. This is characteristic of much of Iñárritu’s work. And it is certainly at work here. Bardem embodies this. We see him move about his world in sweat, in blood. We can almost smell the stink of his body and yet he is a force to be dealt with. He continues with the single-mindedness of a bull in the ring. He is a man with all the emotions that make up humanity. The love he feels for his wife, his children, of life itself are seen in utter magnificence, even as he moves through the corruption of his brother’s world, his own world--looking for a way out when he knows there isn’t one.

Biutiful isn’t the kind of film you leave behind in the theater. It stays with you, gnaws at you. Because of its statement of the human condition and human existence. It’s a deeply disturbing film for this reason, because we wonder why life is difficult for some, perhaps for all of us. Uxbal knows the human condition, because he speaks to the dead. He helps them pass into the afterlife. He knows many of their stories as well as his own. He is a metaphor for humanity.

Painfully demanding, almost impossible to play in parts, the role of Uxbal should earn Javier Bardem the Oscar for Best Actor. In fact, it's a pity that other actors are competing in the same category, because Bardem’s performance is in a category all its own.

No Country for Old Men

Javier Bardem is the focus of this film, the focus of the story, and the focus period. His performance leaps out at you, like a panther in the jungle who stealthily watches you from afar until the moment he leaps at your throat, twisting and turning you. Your heart racing, your belief suspended, you struggle to survive. Within the first five minutes Ifelt like this--trapped, captured, wondering if i could/should continue watching the film. Because what i saw before me on the movie screen transcended make-believe.

Bardem has always been extraordinary--in diverse roles that range from a Cuban poet dying of AIDS to a police detective shot down during a confrontation and paralyzed from the waist down. He's starred in A Sea Inside, Before Night Falls, Jamon, Jamon, and Live Flesh--to name just of few of his phenomenal performances. In No Country for Old Men, Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, an emotionless killer who within the first few minutes of the film kills his arresting officer by strangling him with his handcuffs, and soon after uses a cattle stun gun (that he carries around as nonchalantly as most of us carry our wallets) to kill the driver of a car he suddenly decides he wants.

The story centers around a drug deal gone bad. Multiple murders. A guy who chances on the money from the deal--Llewellan Moss (Josh Brolin), takes it and then has the Bardem character hot on his heals with all the stuff that goes with a guy who is essentially proof that the devil exists . . .

Shot in Texas and New Mexico, the desolation of the area speaks of lawlessness that has somehow survived from the days of the Old West. And yet there is an order and simplicity to those who abide the law, as if they can't see or acknowledge the presence of the likes of Chigurh. When asked to throw a coin, a shopkeeper moves along with the game, somehow not giving in to what he must know is clear: if he doesn't call it right, he's about to lose his life.

Some of the character actors are so good you swear they were spotted in some soda shop or gas station in West Texas and are just playing themselves. But Bardem is on a level all his own. He portrays the kind of frightening that makes you queasy. I don't mean in terms of blood and gore, but in the sense of the numbing, gut-wrenching feeling you get from staring at pure evil. Lke looking into the eyes of Charlie Manson. That's why it was often difficult to watch the film. I didn't want affirmation that the devil exists. And yet I was drawn to the utter dakness and sociopathic perfection of Bardem's character.

Written and directed by the Coen brothers, also starring Tommy Lee Jones as the local county sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, this movie does justice to the dark visions of Cormac McCarthy's novel, upon which the movie is based. Jone's character is an old man who doesn't understand the evil that walks the land, even though he's been dealing with it all his adult life. And we're left to wonder, like him, what kind of country this is that allows the likes of Bardem's character to survive.