BIUTIFUL

Spain/Mexico, 2010, 147 minutes, Colour.
Javier Badim, Maricel Alvarez.
Directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has made some arresting and thought-provoking films: Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel. This is also arresting, thought-provoking – and very sad.

The setting is Barcelona (after a moving opening sequence of two hands and a ring and father and daughter talking about family, then a scene in the woods between Uxbal and his father, both scenes forming the end of the film as well). Uxbal means well, but is involved in all kinds of shady deals, especially with illegals from Africa and from China. He is divorced from his wife who is bi-polar and irresponsible and he tries to care for his two children, quite demanding on manners and good behaviour from them.

We follow him around the city as he tries to deal with street selling Africans who are also selling drugs, with a Chinese sweat factory and with his brother’s links with supplying unqualified illegals for the building industry. There is enough material here for several films and the director’s vivid picture of mundane, everyday life in Catalonia.

But, very early we learn that Uxbal has terminal cancer and the film is about his dealing with this and his trying to get everything in order, especially for his children. Uxbal also has a gift of communing with the dead and relaying messages to the bereaved. For his own counselling, he goes to a kindly woman, also gifted, who is able to offer him sound advice.

Uxbal is a good man, not without considerable faults, but presented as something of a secular saint (someone reminds him that he is not Mother Teresa), trying to do good and to undo the consequences of what he has done wrong – with the wife of a Senegalese deportee and her baby, with a dormitory of Chinese who are victims of an industrial mistake.

And the title is Biutiful (which Uxbal’s daughter asks him how to spell). Actually, Malcolm Muggeridge’s portrait of Mother Teresa was ‘Something Beautiful for God’. Uxbal, according to his lights is trying to do something beautiful for those he encounters.

1. The title, Anna’s spelling of the word? Uxbal and his advice? The film offering beauty in squalor?

2. The work of Inarritu, his concern about issues, humanity? The Hispanic background?

3. The city of Barcelona, the overviews, the poorer areas, the world of the illegals, the illegal dormitories and factories, homes, clubs – the underside of the city? The musical score, emotional? The songs?

4. The prologue with the two hands, the discussion about fingers, family, rings, traditions? The sequence resumed at the end but with the focus on faces?

5. The second prologue, in the snow, Uxbal with his father, the younger man before he died, the comment on the ponytail, the wolves, the owls and the hairball, the dead owl, the father imitating the sounds of the sea and the wind, the end and the scene reprised? And the final question as the father led Uxbal away – what’s over there?

6. The introduction to Uxbal, the prologue, his illness, age, appearance, his irritability with the nurse and the injection, his angers? Going to the doctor, the discovery that he had only months to live? His pain? The perspective of death, his wanting to fix everything and have it in order?

7. His gift, communing with the dead, going to the funeral house, the corpses of the children laid out, the accident? His communing with the boy, the story about the stolen watch, the mother’s being upset, the father coming later and Uxbal explaining where the watch was?

8. Bea as his counsellor, her own giftedness, her persuading him to face death, her wisdom, the gift of the stones as protection for his children?

9. The issue of selling his father’s niche, the story of the father, escaping from Franco, going to Mexico, dying of pneumonia within two weeks? Their taking the coffin out, opening it, the embalmed father, Tito unable to look, Uxbal touching his father?

10. Tito, the phone call, Marambra and her high spirits, the loud music, dancing, nakedness, interrupting the phone call? Tito and his talking with his brother? She telling the truth about the visit, Tito lying to Uxbal? As brothers, the issue of the niche? The jobs, the building site, Tito as the contact for Uxbal? The club, the dances, sex, the cocaine, Uxbal drinking, the drugs, telling the truth to the woman about his death?

11. Uxbal and his children, Lily minding them while he worked, meals at home, his insistence on manners, Matteo and his wetting the bed? Their going to school, relationship with their father? Uxbal as a good and loving father? Marambra and her story, bipolar, the drugs, drinking? The photos in the hallway of happy memories? The divorce, Uxbal having custody? Her presence and absence? A reunion with Uxbal, a machine to control her bipolar moods? Her clients, her children’s opinion of her, her unhappiness? Her being hard on Matteo, hitting him, Anna and her birthday, taking her away on the trip and leaving Matteo at home, his smoking, the burning mattress? The birthday party for Anna’s tenth birthday, the family present, singing ‘Happy Birthday’? The gift of the stones from Bea for each child to cherish?

12. The Chinese, the illegals, the details of the factory, the making of the garments, the quality of the goods? The dormitory, the routines, waking up at six-thirty in the morning? Uxbal and his buying the heaters, hoping for some warmth, for Lily and her baby? His discovery of everyone dead? The young Chinese and his callous getting rid of the bodies, throwing them into the sea, their washing ashore?

13. The Chinese boss, his young friend, the callous attitude of the young man, their homosexual relationship? The disaster, the bodies, the boss killing his friend?

14. The Africans, the sales in the street, selling drugs, the elaborate sequence of the police chasing them through the city? Ige and her husband, his being deported, her baby, Spanish citizen? Uxbal and his inviting Ige and the baby to settle in the house, to be with his children? Their relationship, Ige taking them to school? The gift of the money? Her seeming to leave, deciding not to, staying to help? Her being with Uxbal in his illness and death?

15. Uxbal, his relationship with his children, their sensing that he would die?

16. The recurring visions, going back to where the film started? But asking the further question of his father, to where?