"Biutiful": Acting as a Disappearing Act

Barcelona as we see it in Biutiful is not what the tour guide will show you.   Inarritu's city is as dark as it is light in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona.  This reminds us that the director directs where the camera goes, that there are no random shots, it's all point of view and choice of subject matter, no one speaks with God's voice. What a mistake it would be to think you know a place based on how it is depicted in only one movie.

Javier Bardem is in both films.  In both films (and so many others) he practices the highly refined, careful art of disappearing into the character.  

So much box office and so many movie careers depend on just the opposite.

Reviews are about whether to see a movie; sightings are about what there is to be seen in the movie, which moments on the screen illuminate life.  This film is about all of the important things, beginning with a father's love for his children and his desire to protect them at all costs.  

Uxbal descends into the underworld every day to make ends meet.  He constantly juggles the darkest challenges.  His means of livelihood is unsavory and complex; but when it causes suffering, he cares.   His estranged wife's behavior reduces him to a single father, wary and weary.  He is dying.

His life is organized by illness and the need for money.  In the latter, he's like the rest of us; in the former like any of us may become.  

The story inside the film is directed by an actor who makes several on-screen appearances at critical moments --  Money.  Cash.  No credit cards accepted in this world.  Colorful, European oversized bills, dirty, folded, in batches.

Money motivates all the action.  Money demands all the attention.  Money only stops mattering when life itself stops.

Through it all, Bardem gives such a sympathetic portrait of Uxbal that we cannot separate the actor from the character, or even from ourselves as we watch.   

Uxbal/Bardem understands that the first romance is the family, and that the story of this romance will be constructed by the children out of memories of the parents, even when nothing exists but scraps of information.  Despite insurmountable obstacles, Uxbal/Bardem never wavers from his mission:  to protect his children and to show them who he is.