‘Biutiful’ (2010): Exhibit A in “Misery Porn”

Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu || Produced by: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jon Kilik, Fernando Bovaira

Screenplay by: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Armando Bó, Nicolàs Giacobone || Starring: Javier Bardem, Luo Jin, Maricel Álvarez

Music by: Gustavo Santaolalla || Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto || Edited by: Stephen Mirrione || Country: Mexico, Spain || Language: Spanish

Running Time: 147 minutes

Alejandro González Iñárritu, much like Alfonso Cuarón, is a filmmaker about whom my assessment waivers back and forth with each new installment in his filmography. Most of his movies I’ve seen I enjoyed more than I didn’t for either their ambitious narrative structure, well constructed lead characters, bonkers camerawork, memorable location-photography, or some combination thereof. As pretentious as their philosophical diatribes come across at times (e.g. Birdman [2014]) and as melodramatic as their stories grow (e.g. Babel [2006], The Revenant [2015]),  I appreciated their films’ sheer directorial creativity. Iñárritu, like Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro — collectively referred to as “The Three Amigos” of the Mexican film industry — embrace inventive storytelling rather than resting on the laurels of their screenplays’ transgressive social commentary, unlike many other, lesser awards-bait films. I have my qualms with the unmotivated showiness of Emmanuel Lubezki’s direction of photography in Iñárritu’s movies, not to mention Cuarón’s (see also: Y Tu Mama, También [2001], Children of Men [2006], Gravity [2013]), but at the end of the day, González Iñárritu’s incorporation of that sort of cinematographic finesse into his multilayered stories elevates his work above the international competition. As much as certain creative choices by Iñárritu and his ilk irk me on occasion, most of his movies are still really, really good.

Javier Bardem chills with his diegetic children in one of the less miserable moments of Biutiful. This is nice!

… and then we have movies like Biutiful. Released in 2010 between the non-linear, protagonist-free Babel and the mainstream success of Birdman, this downtrodden, morose drama plays much like countless artsy foreign dramas most critics gush over at numerous film festivals. That Biutiful (the orthographical spelling of the English word “beautiful” in Spanish) received a somewhat muted reception in places like Cannes and the Academy Awards beyond lead Javier Bardem’s understated performance is ironic given how much its surface-level qualities mirror that of awards-bait, to which the likes of The Three Amigos rarely stoop. The movie follows the final days of Bardem as a single father and petty criminal who sells various contraband on the black market through undocumented migrant communities; his diagnosis with prostate cancer sends him on a psychological tailspin where he reflects upon his broken marriage (his wife, Argentine actress Maricel Álvarez, is an alcoholic and prostitute), attempts to provide a financial windfall for his children, and finds jobs for his various immigrant employees. 

If you expect any sort of conventional ending to that premise, perhaps with a small dose of hopeful ambiguity present in some of Iñárritu’s other films, you best check your expectations at the door. Biutiful, for all its competent performances and relatable tragedy, is little more than 147 minutes (it’s long) of unbridled misery for both its protagonist and, I suspect, most audiences. This isn’t a “feel-bad” comedy-drama where the starring cast earn some form of redemption through the overarching narrative’s pathos (e.g. Paddleton [2019]), but rather a nonstop slow-motion trainwreck of a man’s life falling apart; keep in mind that that involves multiple small children left effectively orphaned and multiple illegal immigrants dead as a result of sheer negligence on the part of Bardem, and you’ll understand why viewers suffering from depression should steer clear of this movie.

Combine Biutiful’s dreary slog of a plot with its incoherent visuals and you’ll further understand why I wouldn’t recommend this movie to most folks in general. Biutiful was the last film Iñárritu made before his first of two collaborations (Birdman and The Revenant) thus far with the venerable Lubezki; while those latter two movies’ dependence on longwinded, self-congratulatory oners borders on overindulgence, I’ll take those impressive if obvious technical showcases any day over Rodrigo Prieto’s inexplicable handheld shaky-cam. One of my biggest pet-peeves in filmmaking is unmotivated handheld camerawork in scenes that are primarily dialogue driven or with limited character movement, where the frame rocks about its actors like an earthquake happened during principal photography. I’m not against handheld camerawork, even unstabilized techniques, as a general rule, particularly for action sequences, but holy shit does this movie drive me nuts with its almost nonstop wannabe documentarian visual style.

Prieto’s quasi-cinéma vérité aesthetics work better in Iñárritu’s earlier movies for different reasons (he shot the director’s first three features, including Babel), but here in Biutiful I’d argue they compound all the weaknesses of the latter’s script. Of Mexico’s Three Amigos, I’d argue at least two of them, Alejandro Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón, are so prone to directorial self-indulgence they emphasize the extreme aspects of their screenplays and the dynamic movement of their cinematography to the point of exhaustion. Too often, Iñárritu in particular transforms into the non-English language arthouse version of Michael Bay, where he maximizes narrative melodrama regardless of context and overemphasizes cinematographic style even when it counteracts the point of his story.

Maricel Álvarez stars as Bardem’s wife and the personification of “damaged goods.”

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Depressing to the point of repetitiveness and with so much unnecessary camera movement you’ll wanna toss a tripod at the screen, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful is a film whose narrative incoherence matches the clunkiness of its title. The supporting cast are storytelling fodder for the screenplay’s obsessive misery porn, while the main castmembers have little visible development beyond vague, esoteric notions of reconnecting with deceased family members in the afterlife.

— However… Javier Bardem, always the reliable, versatile professional, leads Biutiful with a magnetic performance that channels pathos better than the overall story ever could.

—> Given how I’d rewatch this movie about as soon as I’d give the Transformers (2007–2017) franchise another chance, Biutiful is NOT RECOMMENDED.

? Oh look, it’s a flock of computer generated birds flying in formation!