Review of Biutiful

Movie: Biutiful

Year:  2012

Director:  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Main Actors:  Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez, and Hanaa Bouchaib

Biutiful is about a man, Uxbal, who is coming to terms with his own death and preparing to die.   After being in a lot of pain for awhile, he goes to the doctor and finds out that he has cancer, which has metastasized, and he only has a few months to live.  Uxbal is far from ready to die.  He has so many people dependent on him and it seems that things keep going wrong for him. 

He works as a Middleman for a Chinese sweatshop.  He obtains knock-off goods from the Chinese and gives them to Senegalese men who sell them illegally on the streets.  Uxbal works with the police to keep all members from being arrested.  

The other people, and possibly the most important people, that rely on him are his children Ana and Mateo.  He is a single father; their mother is mentally unstable and an addict, so he takes care of them full time.  The question for him is: what will happen to them when he dies?

Uxbal starts saving money and putting it aside for his children, but he does not tell them or anyone how ill he is.  He feels bad for the Chinese workers and argues on their behalf for better living conditions.  The Chinese live in a locked basement, which gets very cold at night.  One day he goes out and buys heaters to make their nights better.  Uxbal buys the cheapest heaters, and all of the people who are in the basement die of asphyxiation.   The men who own the sweatshop do not know what to do.  One of the men decides to throw all of the dead bodies in the ocean and the wash up on shore. 

Another event of Uxbal’s tragic life is that one of his sellers gets caught in a police raid and the seller gets deported. His wife Ege and her child have nowhere to go.  Uxbal feels so responsible that, while he is living with his children’s mother, he lets her stay there.  

Uxbal’s biggest challenge is with his children.  He has so many mixed emotions about what to do.  Uxbal’s own father died when he was around his children’s age and Uxbal cannot remember him.  He only has faint memories.  He fears his children will not remember him when he is gone.   He also wants them to be well-taken care of when he is gone, but his options are slim.  At first, the children’s mother seems like a good option, so they move in with her as a “test-run”, but her mental illness gets in the way.  She hits Mateo and leaves him home all weekend by himself; there are several other examples of her poor parenting skills.  So Uxbal moves back to his apartment where Ege is staying.  Uxbal soon becomes reliant on Ege and he is more important to her than he ever could have imagined.

Uxbal has a friend who gave him two stones, one for each child, and told Uxbal when the end is near to give one to each child for protection.  Uxbal, at a belated party for his daughter, gives each child a stone. 

Ege takes care of him when his health deteriorates even further.  He cannot get out of bed for most of the day and life becomes more painful.  He asks Ege to take care of the children when he is gone and he gives her all of the money he has saved.  Soon his daughter finds out that he is dying and one of the last scenes is her lying in bed with him.

This movie portrays something that all humans no matter what country or time period they live in, will go through.  No one can escape death, but very little can make it easy to say goodbye, especially when there is so much left undone in the person’s life. This movie exemplifies the fear, the sadness, and power that dying has over someone’s life.  However, it shows people that they are not alone and while it does not glorify death, it depicts the human experience.