Are My Affairs in Order?

Star Rating:


In spite of the cumbersome details, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful is essentially the story of a man who must put his affairs in order before he dies. His name is Uxbal (Oscar nominee Javier Bardem), and he has been diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer, presumably of the prostate. He's a Barcelona career criminal, acting as an intermediary between the underworld and a sweatshop that produces phony designer handbags to sell on the streets. To make extra money, he negotiates to have the undocumented Chinese workers that produce the handbags lent out to a construction company looking to cut corners financially. One of them is his children's babysitter, who looks no older than fifteen or sixteen but already has a baby. There also ties to illegal Senegalese drug dealers, who are safe for as long as Uxbal can continue bribing the cops.
 
On top of that, there's his personal life. He's separated from his wife, Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), who's bipolar and an alcoholic. He's left to care for his two children, Ana and Mateo (Hanaa Bouchaib and Guillermo Estrella), who he loves dearly. His greatest fear is that they won't remember him; he doesn't remember either of his parents, although he does have a old photograph of his father as a young man. He also wants to ensure that his children are cared for once he's gone, which will be difficult since his wife was clearly not meant to be a mother. She makes a go of it, though, by suggesting a train ride and a family vacation for Ana's birthday. He doesn't tell anyone how sick he is, initially because he desperately clings to the hope that he will beat his cancer.

                                              
                                                
Uxbal is sometimes called upon to speak with the spirits of the recently deceased, a service he will provide for a fee. It's not made explicitly clear if he's genuinely blessed with a sixth sense or merely telling grieving families what they want to hear, and an early scene at a memorial service for multiple children is of no help. We do know that he's friends with another professed medium named Bea (Ana Wagener), who knows that he will die. She suggests that he make peace with the dead. He's more inclined to make peace with the living by trying to improve on the lives of the immigrants he has exploited for who knows how long. Although unintended, one of these attempts will have very tragic results. He isn't sure whether he should do the decent thing and turn himself in. To me the answer is obvious, but then again, movies generally don't play by the rules of life.
 
He's trying to do some good with what little time he has left. This is admirable, but it's also expected in a movie like this. As touching and generally sound as the message is, some of the depicted injustices seem manufactured solely for the satisfaction of watching Uxbal redeem himself. He's not an innocent man, and yet we're forced to view him through a remarkably flattering lens, in all likelihood because of his illness. One wonders: What if he didn't have cancer? What if he was a perfectly healthy man who one day decided to start doing the right thing? That, to me, would add a lot more credibility to the film. Stories about people doing good deeds when faced with their own mortality have long since outgrown their ability to surprise me; they're in fact so commonplace that the very idea is just short of anticlimactic.

                                              
Despite a routine narrative, Iñárritu does a wonderful job of developing the characters and exploring the settings, the latter looking like anything but the idealistic Barcelona you might see in a tourism commercial. There's never the sense that the actors are merely tools for advancing the plot; they approach their roles realistically. As for Bardem, there's no denying the film benefits from his presence. His range of emotion doesn't seem forced, which is good during the first part of the movie and even better towards the end, when his illness becomes aggressive. In essence, he adds humanity to his character, making him relatable even in the face of a contrived story.
 
While not perfect, Biutiful (Mexico's entry in the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film) improves on much of what made me resist Iñárritu's previous film, Babel. It's not a meaningless display of suffering, but a story with a message I could relate to and care about. It's bookended by scenes that feature the same actors delivering the same lines; the only difference is the perspective, the order and angle of the shots. We're not meant to understand the meaning of the imagery or the dialogue until the end, but both instances lend a wonderful sense of serenity and acceptance. Perhaps the underlying message is that, if we make life a little better for others in this world, we will find peace in the next.