Not long ago a friend of this blog asked me about a derogatory comment I made in my post of Dec. 1 regarding the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who at that time did not hesitate to call " horrible (in my unique perspective, of course, and as always, without trying to necessarily share my opinion.) I apologize for the frankness of that view, but the fact is that so far held three films, Amores perros (idem, 2000), 21 grams (21 Grams, 2003) and Babel (ditto, 2006 ), not only had I favorably impressed, but at times managed to bore me profoundly, so much so that I did not even see all of Amores perros, whose projection left approximately around ninety minutes and had to make a great effort to complete the footage from the other two. I know too well the reputation of the director, for which only agree, more or less in a couple of points, otherwise so obvious that few people would hardly be able to say the opposite: first, that the Iñárritu's film is distinguished, at least so far, for their sordid and desperate vision of human existence, his love of the environment poor and impoverished, and their tendency to put on stories covered, in whole or in part, by tragic air, and, secondly, his skill as a director of actors, so many performers who have worked with him have been some of their best and most intense performances, such is the case, for example, Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro in 21 Grams , or even Brad Pitt, which is saying-in Babel. But contrary to popular reports to the contrary, his staging seems ugly, gimmicky, redundant in most cases merely a formal display of a handheld camera and frames taken, "apparently" random (which, apparently, not: Inarritu is known to many and varied takes of each scene), work completion and surface rough-coated, yes, an appearance of complexity, narrative density and hardness psychological, which stemmed largely from the scripts (in my opinion, questionable) by Guillermo Arriaga. Following this, the temporal leaps that made the development of 21 grams, or parallel stories that nourished the entrails of Amores Perros and Babel , were but mere narrative tricks designed to add "complication" , not complexity, some frames, explained following the conventional development approach-knot-end or a linear assembly sequence-to-string, would have little or no interest. This was for me the film by Alejandro González Iñárritu Biutiful ... until (idem, 2010). 
Surprisingly, Biutiful is, or rather, I found nothing, though at a glance share many traits most characteristic film of its director, beginning with a taste for the pessimistic view of human beings and the degree of involvement they get to impress upon the players. Strictly speaking of concepts, Biutiful "is" something else, at least with respect to Amores perros, 21 grams and Babel. Draws attention, first, the absence in the credits of screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga after the highly publicized at the time Iñárritu professional break, causing the script is written by him, from his own idea, in collaboration with Armando Bo and Nicolas Giacobone. This means that, at least compared with his previous three films, has disappeared into Biutiful building almost completely narrative based on the time shift and the parallel development of several frames, even though (I stress "almost" ) survive some of those leaps in time and retain a certain tone coral. The main difference from previous proposals of the author is, first, that the way to build the story here has a meaning, and most importantly, an expressive force to my mind away from those early and so held jobs. The start of the film, summed up in two sequences, illustrates what I mean: in the first sequence of this principle, we see the protagonist, Uxbal (Javier Bardem), talking to a young man (Nasser Saleh) in the middle of a snowy forest; later, as the usual talk-including SPOILERS - about who is that guy and what sense is that conversation in the forest, the second sequence consists of a first fixed plane and illuminated in the gloom of the hands of Uxbal and a girl, we will soon know that this is his daughter Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib) - while off hear in his speech, which revolves around Uxbal ring on her finger and looks just giving to the small, also, as we shall see, not until much later that we understand the full extent of the relevance of this plane. 
Moreover, despite the film takes place almost exclusively from the point of view Uxbal character, the evolution of the latter serves to bind simultaneously to the description of the characters who swarm around him, again creating a sense of choral portrait, or if you prefer, group portrait, not only in regard to his daughter Anne and her other younger son, Matthew (William Estrella), with which Uxbal lives in Barcelona's Raval district, but also Marambra (Maricel Álvarez), his ex-wife and mother of small, Titus (Eduard Fernandez), his brother Ekweme (Cheikh Ndiaye) an illegal immigrant of Senegalese nationality who lives badly as mantero "in the company of his wife and his son, which happens Uxbal merchandise to sell on the streets, good which in turn provides Hai (Cheng Tai Shen), the head of a clandestine business of making bags for woman who works in a dingy basement full of illegal workers also native to China, and maintaining a homosexual relationship with his young partner Liwei (Luo Jin), "Lily" (Lang Lin Sofia), China's young mother who cares for the children of Uxbal while away from home doing their tricks 
; Zanca (Ruben Ochandiano), the squadron mosso d' corrupt, for the money that gives Uxbal "by the Chinese," turns a blind eye to the "manteros" Senegalese ... Is surprising how On this occasion, which will hopefully be repeated in future studies of its director, Iñárritu offers us characters who are not mere instruments of a narrative framework designed to dazzle fans of puzzles, but human beings drawn with precision and interest of their experiences without need, again, crimping with them a puzzle : the degraded landscape of the suburbs of Barcelona who appears in Biutiful "and has been the subject of some criticism derogatory lacking, in my opinion, unfounded, and then see-is populated by living figures and not mere chess pieces. Put another way: Uxbal captures the attention of the story because the character chosen by Iñárritu and his co-writers as the narrative engine of the same, but all others have their own entity and may have been, at any given time, the protagonists of this fiction within which had been occupied Uxbal hypothetically a secondary role. Hence, apart from the role of the former, on which also return shortly along with the other loose ends that have been unleashed since they are intimately related to Uxbal (the two sequences of the principle and the look on Barcelona), the other characters of Biutiful greatly enrich the story: the picture of mental disorder Marambra; how Tito is used each time it stops in his apartment and throws, the paradoxical situation, the edge of illegality, Ekweme and his fellow Africans, forced to sell goods on the black market to survive and under the perpetual threat of arrest and deportation, and how they try to exploit loopholes in this system also to survive (the son of Ekweme, just over one year, English-born, and therefore can not be deported: the ius sanguinis the smaller the single point of attachment to Spain with their starving parents), the terrible description of the daily routine of sweatshop Hai, also, that wonderful point about the discomfort that is formed in the latter's house, while eating with her family when her lover comes to see Liwei, blaming their relationship quiet "unnatural." I have read or heard these days the odd criticism regarding Uxbal character, whose psychological description it reproaches the fact that someone too kindly given by lumpen environments that often moves. I also know of complaints about the alleged unlikelihood that are described in the slums of Barcelona, \u200b\u200bwhich have served to bind, by Javier Bardem, who suffered critical to Woody Allen its still so, so butchered and misunderstood Vicky Cristina Barcelona (idem, 2008) (1) . Leaving aside these criticisms, everything you want respectable even though many of these arguments are based on very little worthy of respect (and usually have another name: prejudices), I believe instead that one of the best qualities of Biutiful lies in the description of the main character and the urban environment (Barcelona, \u200b\u200bin this case) in which he lives, that both character and setting, forming a whole almost inseparable, and that this unique fusion of Uxbal and Barcelona (or,
least Barcelona in which he live) is a credit to the subjective component Iñárritu print the story through both script certain ideas that are particularly impacted by this subjectivity, and the work of staging, whose merit is not foreign collaboration of cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who prints the film a peculiar sense of light and color to give a patina impressionist images, so that the realism of the environments and situations turn contrasted with the relative "unreal" plastic those who are filmed. Unreality that is clear, as I say, the description of the character of Uxbal, present in almost all sequences of the film and treasures in a quality person also "unrealistic." It explains that one of the ways the protagonist of living is to attend funerals and wakes, to capture the last thoughts of the deceased and then transmitted to family members in exchange for money. Again, against all odds, Iñárritu seeing here an unexpected force at the time of viewing, sober and effective, the moments in which, apparently, Uxbal communicates with the souls of the dead. Is exemplary in this sense, the first time you see him do in the funeral of three children (warning: SPOILER ): Uxbal is left alone in a room with three small coffins, with a simple shot / reverse, we see how it "appears" before him one child, who is both inside and outside their own coffin. Also excellent a later time in which we see repeated Uxbal that contact with the other side (warning: SPOILER ): this time, it does at the foot of the deathbed of an old man and the scene closes with a detailed magnificent: the protagonist leaves the bedroom of the deceased, taken in a plane so that, for a couple of seconds, we see the back of a mirror image to be reflected, surreptitiously, the spirit of old dead ... This results in a couple of terrifying moments, even if they are solved with the same sobriety (warning: SPOILER ): the impressive scene in which Uxbal inspect the basement where Chinese workers have died of Ai, burdened by faulty gas appliances that the protagonist himself provided (it should be noted these close-ups of Uxbal in light shots, so that we see behind him and perched on the roof of the premises ... the souls of the dead Chinese), and this instant-attention: SPOILER - in Uxbal which senses another lost soul lurking in the ceiling of your own home ... 
Other aspects of Biutiful no less interesting, in my opinion, have a direct heir Iñárritu "melodrama charro" so characteristic of Mexican cinema, and a relatively similar line to the film which is likely to remain, even today, the best Latin American filmmaker present (though at this time suffer an unfortunate forgetfulness): Arturo Ripstein. Play in this sense, attention: SPOILER - Uxbal deadly disease, the cancer that makes you piss blood, a detail that does come to mind the famous Fat City (Golden City) (Fat City, 1972) John Huston, and that causes incontinence urinary, forcing even have to wear diapers ... In fact, all Biutiful can be seen, and understood, as a mortuary melodrama, the description of the last months of life of a marginal character whose life falls apart as it approaches at the time of his death: the aforementioned, and tortuous relationship with his ex-wife Marambra, a woman with drug problems, mental breakdowns and bouts of nymphomania, the tragedy also mentioned warning: SPOILER - of Chinese killed in the basement, the time-warning: SPOILER - Zanca, the police "anointed", is quoted in a bar Uxbal to tell you remove the preferential treatment to "manteros" because he also has to think about the maintenance of his own family. Significantly, as the life of Uxbal 
is extinguished, will correspondingly increase their sensitivity to the afterlife: Uxbal has a conversation with Bea (Ana Wagener), a seer who advised him to have to settle their affairs before to leave this world the hero teaches her children a picture of his father, the grandfather of the children, which Uxbal never met and that Spain was still very young, never to return (warning: SPOILER important : the boy in the picture is not but man youth with whom we have seen chatting Uxbal snowy forest sequence from the beginning), later (warning: SPOILER ) Uxbal and Tito will be called to identify no less than the body of this father, who died at an early age and whose embalmed body retains virtually the same as it appears in the picture that keeps Uxbal: the scene in which the latter strokes, excited, petrified face of his father, there is also among the highlights of the film. Needless to add (warning: SPOILERS important ) that those sequences of the conversation in the snowy woods of Uxbal with, we now know, his father died young, and the protagonist with his daughter Ana in bed when he gives his ring, are the funeral of a narrative closure that before reaching this somber conclusion (at all, as has also been suggested these days, a "happy ending") is presciently preceded by vigorous notes that contrast and contrast the physical and mental deterioration of Uxbal with etched portrait of a troubled city and oozing, also, life and death: police raid against "manteros" which makes the tourist center Barcelona in a battlefield, the visceral traveling along the beach we discover (warning: SPOILER ) which has been the fate end of the lifeless bodies of Chinese workers. Of course there are imperfections in Biutiful , chief among them an excess of footage and some other expendable-sequence of the club, for example, despite the virtuoso level camera phone that came to the booth Uxbal where sitting his brother Tito and his party-which prevents us from talking about a movie being completely achieved. But at this point, is it necessary to say that Biutiful I found a wonderful film and the title by which I have reconciled with the film by Alejandro González Iñárritu? (1) I refer to what published on November 6, 2008 in my previous blog: http://elcineseguntfv.blogspot.es/1226001420/ "vicky-cristina-barcelona":-a-woody-allen-falsely-damn / .
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