Alejandro González Iñárritu’s fourth feature film, Biutiful, is a structural, though not a thematic, departure from his earlier films. In drafting a story (with a screenplay co-written by Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone) centered on one main character in a single city, he has wisely eschewed the thematically heavy convention of interconnecting stories that have a common focal point. As much as I admire his other films, there is artificiality in the way he tries to illustrate the ways in which all humanity are inextricably tied to one another. With Babel it became a bit too preachy for my taste.
However, in Biutiful he presents a portrait of a man, Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem in one of his best performances) – a father, husband, underworld criminal and spiritual visionary – who learns he’s dying of cancer. Everything in his life is called into question as he has only a matter of weeks or months to reconcile his morality and life to find inner peace.
