Matt Mazur makes the case for Biutiful

Our friend Matt Mazur at PopMatters makes strong closing argument in support of Alejandro Gonz√°lez I√±√°rritu’s Biutful.

Going into the Cannes Film Festival back in May, buzz on Iñárritu’s newest film Biutiful felt positive, there was a palpable excitement surrounding the film. But then, after the film’s bow, it was met with a strongly mixed reception and there seemed to be critical cries of praise and disappointment in what felt like equal accord. The Telegraph‘s Sukhdev Sandhu snidely labeled the film a “laborious stretch of designer depression, a remorseless headache,” in a terse, two-star, four-paragraph review. In Contention‘s Guy Lodge sharply pointed out, in his two and a half star short take review review of Biutiful, precisely why the film may have met with a limp response from critics: “There’s nothing like bleary-eyed festival fatigue to shorten one’s patience with films that fall a little short of either potential or expectation.” And therein lies the rub: how can critics who are clamoring to be the first to review the newest releases at film festivals across the world justify passing the layered Biutiful off as “laying it on a bit thick,” as Sukhdev wrote, or as a “cheap portrait of despair” as Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn wrote, when they are seeing several movies a day in the theater and are expected to tease out the nuances of staggeringly complex works of art at break-neck speed for an impossibly quick turnaround?

…The glue that holds Biutiful‚Äòs many pieces together is essentially Bardem‚Äôs mercurial turn as Uxbal, a mysterious, tough man who knows these streets like the back of his hand. I√±√°rritu is known for demanding his actors come in very prepared and become fierce collaborators over the course of shooting, in Biutiful‚Äòs case, five consecutive months. ‚ÄúI think that the most important thing is when you feel like you have the same vision, that you share the vision, you know that they understand clearly who they are for you,‚Äù said the director during our chat. ‚ÄúNot only the physical appearance, but the internal nature of them. I have been very lucky to work with actors where I knew they would be, by nature, beyond the technical skill, some people that would be close in their nature to the character. I wrote this character thinking ‚ÄòJavier,‚Äô so I knew that. It was like tailoring a suit to fit somebody with the correct measurements, you know? If you cast well, you are 80 percent ahead of the game. And then you have to get them all of the information they require. And then to make a fucking lot of takes and get what you need and cross your fingers that they will not slap you in the seventieth take.‚Äù

Bardem talked about how the project initially came to him: “He[Iñárritu] said, ‘I wrote this with you in my mind, but you are free to decline it.’ There is a lot of pressure when they tell you that they wrote this with you in mind. I’m like, ‘Oh, I cannot say no to this.’ But he’s wise and he said, ‘You can do it and somebody else can do it also. I would like you to do it.’ I read it and I’m a huge fan of his work and some of the greatest actors of all time have worked with him and have done some of their best work with him. So as an actor I was really interested in the process of how this man brings out some of the best performances of some of the best actors. I know why. Its working really hard and putting you against the wall, in a good way. He works hard. He doesn’t stop. The material and what he proposes to you is a life journey. It’s not a performance. It’s like, ‘Do you want to jump in with me or not? You decide.’”

Well worth a click to PopMatters to read the rest.