Following Alejandro González Iñárritu’s acrimonious split with writing partner and collaborator Guillermo Arriaga, he arrives at Cannes this year with something to prove. Arriaga’s recently made his directorial solo debut with the poorly received “The Burning Plain.” Featuring his now trademark narrative time jumping — already displayed with diminishing returns in “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams” and “Babel” — the film failed to catch the fire the way his previous works with Innaritu did. And unfortunately, Innaritu looks like he will be met with the same fate.
Written by Iñárritu, this time around with Amando Bo and Nicolas Giacobone, he gives up the time jumping tricks here (for the most part, more on that in a bit) but it seems he’s traded them in instead for some of the grimmest, most depressing material of his career. As anyone familiar with Iñárritu knows, his films have never exactly been rainbows, but here he goes to a whole new level, with even less in the way of redemption.
The film follows the mullet-wearing Uxbal (Javier Bardem) a former drug addict who currently trades in the gray market. He has an enterprise of sorts running a crew who sell black market fashions, while overseeing the factory production as well. He has two kids, a bipolar ex-wife who is a part-time prostitute and might be having an on again/off again affair with his brother, and oh yeah, Uxbal is also dying of cancer and has two months to live. Add into the mix African immigrants, the gay Chinese lovers who provide the bootleg goods and a touchy relationship with a crooked cop, we have a film that faces a serious chance of not being able to keep all the balls in the air; that it does is nothing short of a minor miracle.
But as Iñárritu manages to keep the narrative going forward, the film is simply a slog. Running two hours and twenty minutes, as we follow Bardem on the task to set his life in order before he dies, it soon becomes clear that Iñárritu doesn’t have much to say outside of his story. While some have criticized his previous films and narrative techniques, he always managed to speak to broader themes with clarity and purpose. Here, those larger themes — immigration and capitalism being the most prominent — largely remain unspoken. Instead, the audience is left to stagger around with Bardem, as his life, on top of what was just outlined, actually gets more complicated and even worse.
What kept us and the audience with the film, even as Uxbal’s problems get worse and the story continues to unfold in new (though not particularly interesting) directions, is Javier Bardem’s commanding performance. On screen for nearly the entire running time, his presence is commanding, authoritative and grounds the film even when the story threatens to spin into the ridiculous (as it does at one or two points in the latter half). That Bardem manages this with such apparent ease is frightening and there is no question in this writer’s mind he’s vaulted himself to the position of frontrunner for taking home a Best Actor award from jury later this week.
As for the film, Iñárritu won’t be so lucky. As mentioned, he does stay away from the narrative back-and-forth — except — he opens the film with two key scenes that are revisited later in the picture, effectively killing any emotional punch they may have had. When those scenes crop back up later, instead of providing the film’s emotional center (albeit, far too late anyway) it plays out like another notch in the story instead. “Biutiful” suffers from a problem most directors would love to have: it’s impeccably acted, wonderfully shot and assuredly put together. Sounds great right? Unfortunately, it’s also a non-starter. Iñárritu never finds the central point from which he wants the audience to latch on to or from the story to start out from (something his previous three films all had). Instead the story sprawls, sprawls some more, takes a light detour here and there and then ends. While Iñárritu may have given up his previous directorial tics, without a central incident what ends up on display, he is a director who technically executes material, that he’s not quite sure what to do with.
“Biutiful” will require a lot from audiences, even those who are fans of the director’s previous work. This film is long and what happens to Uxbal and the people around him is fairly unpleasant. The film is never quite boring, but the events on their own, with a larger thematic arc on display, aren’t particularly interesting either. They often say the journey is more important than the destination; in this case it isn’t. [C]
