BIUTIFUL is one of the best films of 2010, and the strongest and most compelling movie to date by Alejandro Goñzález Inárritu, which is saying something given the innovative style and watchability of his first three films, AMORES PERROS (2000), 21 GRAMS (2003) and BABEL (2006). Inárritu has become, in my estimation, one of the leading modern auteurs, a strange blend of the natural realism of Roberto Rossellini and the psychological and familial depth of Ingmar Bergman. I can’t think of another contemporary filmmaker who has so successfully returned to the same themes of postmodern existentialism, the fragility of family and relationships in general, and the woeful forces of contemporary life that constantly grind us down, and found new and rich meaning in each exploration. BIUTIFUL also features the preeminent performance in Javier Bardem’s cinema career, eclipsing even his deadly portrayal of Anton Chigurh in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007) for which he won an Oscar. That disadvantages him in this year’s competition, but from everything I’ve seen to date, this is the best performance of the year, hands down. Bardem looks like Jesus on smack in the agony of his crumbling life – anything that can go wrong does, and the pain he causes and the destruction he wreaks shake his soul to its core. His portrait of Uxbal, a Barcelona hustler, middleman and facilitator, is so real in its rawness and intensity that it cannot help but captivate us despite our impulse to pull away from such a despicable character. The value we have as human beings, the specific focus of 21 GRAMS, and the essential need for family, as explored in BABEL, come together as one interwoven strand in BIUTIFUL. Bardem is dying of cancer, his crazy wife has left him and he will leave two young children, an abused son and a resentful daughter, behind with no one competent to care for them unless he can find a proper guardian. Until then, it’s a daily scrabble for his footing in a new and shifting world, where African, Asian and Arabic immigrants flock to Barcelona for a better chance at a decent life that constantly eludes them, and the corrupt police become ever greedier. All that awaits the newcomers is a sordid existence selling illegal knockoffs in the streets and police busts that lead to deportation centers – the new Europe is a chaotic and dangerous place. But Bardem oils the wheels that keep the payoffs and scams going, greasing the right palms, trying to keep everyone calm but nobody happy. He helps the wife and son of a deported street trader, but refreshingly the happy ending we might expect never really develops, just as it rarely does in real life. Inárritu is not afraid to follow the natural rhythms the daily existence of Spanish and non-white characters, as aberrant and wandering as these lives may be. These meanderings are strongly accentuated in BIUTIFUL by the atonal and sometimes jarring score by Gustavo Santaolalla, who also scored AMORES PERROS and THE MOTORYCLE DIARIES (Walter Salles, 2004). We are plunged in medias res into a melodrama about the unfairness of fate, how everybody cheats everyone else, the overwhelming questions about why we are placed on this earth, and the ultimate search for the meaning our lives hold any before and after our deaths? Bardem sees nothing funny in the raw deal nature of life– everyone takes from him, nobody give back emotionally or monetarily. Yet somehow Inárritu’s presentation of this character and his weighty problems is never pretentious, never hectoring or lecturing, and so achingly human that I was in tears by the film’s end. The tragic consequences of Bardem’s decision to cut corners when buying heaters for freezing illegal Chinese migrant workers has all the impact of a death camp scene in SCHINDLER’S LIST (Steven Spielberg, 1993). Inárritu also explores, as did Spielberg, the impact and import of both good and evil, and Bardem comes to embody both qualities. I swear that the exquisite cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto, shot largely in close-ups makes Bardem look more Christ-like in each sequence, as if a divine light was both illuminating and killing him simultaneously. Massive flocks of birds portend doom. Bardem spends much of the movie silently contemplating his grim future, as we all do thinking of the mess we are leaving behind for future generations. There is a cost, BIUTIFUL says, for everything we say and do, and an even greater cost to doing nothing. Inárritu brings us an otherworldly sequence in the film with Bardem’s psychic friend who instantly knows that his medical condition is fatal. She is a faith healer who appears to have no faith, a psychic without belief in the afterlife. She refuses money for her gift, while Bardem profits from his similar psychic abilities any chance he gets. That’s the choice in life, Inárritu seems to be saying. You can be a saint or you can be a devil, but no matter which extreme you pick, things come out all the same in the end, and there’s not a thing you can do about it except love who you can and fuck everyone else.

Dir.: Alejandro Goñzález Inárritu, 2010. Spanish/French/Mexican. English and Spanish with English subtitles. Produced by Fernando Bovaira, Inárritu, Jon Kilik. Associate producers, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro. Screenplay by Inarritu, Armando Bo, Nicolas Giacobone. Cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. Edited by Stephen Mirrione. Production design  by Brigitte Broch. Music by Gustavo Santaolalla. With Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez, Guillermo Estrella, Eduard Fernández, Cheikh Ndiaye, Diaryatou Daff, Taisheng Cheng, Luo Jin, George Chibuikwem Chukwuma, Lang Sofia Lin, Yodian Yang. Viewed on DVD.