*****

Biutiful- rm – You will be taken to underside of the streets of Barcelona and get inside people who are scraping by trying to survive and put food on the table for their children. You will meet a man who engages in illegal doings but seems fair and sensitive to his troubled wife, his innocent children and to the immigrants whom he encounters  functioning in the worst possible conditions. You will see him face his own mortality and get a glimpse at what perhaps is Director/Writer Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s view of where death will take us. Make no mistake about it, this is a powerful and depressing movie. Inarritu uses the technique of  weaving together various jarring scenes as he did in his 2006 Oscar nominated film Babel. He very effectively uses dim lighting in many scenes with dark blue colors reflecting the mood of the people and times.  Ultimately it is the journey of Uxbal ( Javier Bardem) which will captivate and haunt you. His empathic nature, love of his children, desperate attempt to survive when the odds are against him which make him a tragic but “biutiful” figure. It may also bring Bardem his second Oscar (he won for Best Supporting Actor in No Country for Old Men in 2008) . There are a lot of things going on in this movie which may not be immediately clear in your consciousness since they are subtle and most of us are relying on the subtitles. All the more reason why the emotional impact that you cannot help but feel as the story runs it’s final course confirms that you have seen an outstanding movie. (2010)