A film by Alejandro González Iñárritu has come out in Spain about a week or so ago. It stars Spanish star and Oscar winner Javier Bardem and tells a story of a man struggling with raising his two children while discovering that he is fatally ill. The film is set in the metropolitan love of my life, Barcelona. The film runs just under two and a half hours during which I have gone through many different stages of human condition ranging from nervous laughter to weeping in a cinema full of people while curled up in my seat in the fetal position (not particularly proud to reveal this one.)
After the movie world has been introduced to such films as Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Biutiful will be a drastically different view on the city for the audience. It is set in the more underprivileged area that even I have never been to nor heard of, and I’ve lived here for years.
When I was buying my ticket, I anticipated that the film was going to be a difficult watch with complex storytelling. I knew that it was received extremely well in Cannes, and that Javier Bardem will probably get a lot of nods for his performance from the awards committees. Truthfully, I think he deserves it. His performance was definitely one of the strongest ones this year, and letting him act in his native language, in my opinion, opens up even more room for him to make the character his own. I was sure that he was going to get an Oscar for his portrayal of Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men, but that character preferred shooting people in the head with a cattlegun connected to a tank of compressed air rather than talking to them. This film is a lot more personal and under your skin, and I think Bardem knew exactly what he had to do to convey the psychological weight his character has to carry throughout the performance.
As far as the film overall, I would say that it is one of the films to look out for in case it comes your way, and it is definitely one of the best films this season. However, I’m still holding out for Blue Valentine to come out to see which one moves me more. Obviously, these are two completely different stories with different intentions, and there is no point in comparing them. But, just as I have mentioned in some of my other movie-related posts, the best films seem to be those that deal with human relations, at least to me. I find that there is something beautiful about a film that is not about any event or occurrence in specific, hence, making you drawn in and feeling like you are sharing the experience with the characters for the duration of the film, and, in the case of the great ones, a long, long time after the film is finished as well.
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