Biutiful

I’m the first to say that cinema can’t be all popcorn and pratfalls, but on the other hand it’s hard to view Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful as any form of entertainment. It’s the opposite of escapism. You want to escape from it. We all have our problems, but I could not wait for this to end so that I could get back to mine, which are positively cheery compared with the poor saps in this movie. Inarritu must have stated off with a checklist of sorrows. This movie has it all: cancer, child abuse, alcoholism, clinical depression, the abuse of illegal immigrant workers, poverty and oodles of death, all set amongst a backdrop of fetid squalor. Lovely. Then the clincher. If you are disposed to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and other elements of the supernatural, you may find the conclusion, which implies that after death we all get together in a pristine snowy forest for a good catch up with our loved ones, uplifting. On the other hand you may just find this further delusion another reason to be depressed by this film. Undeniably, Javier Bardem gives a masterful performance and it’s true that thoughts of the film will stay with you (or perhaps I should say haunt you) for days. But for me it was just all a bit much. I was not that engaged to the extent that I wanted to go on this tough journey with these characters.