Review of Biutiful (2010) by Drtathata — 15 Jul 2011

It was St Paul who claimed that the good that he would was not what he did, but the evil that he wouldn't. In a way, that true statement of the potential for error in the best of our intentions is the strange attractor that drives this beautiful, exquisitely painful story.

Put yourself in the man Uxbal's shoes and ask yourself--what would it feel like to be intricately enmeshed such a complex web, and yet have so few moves available with which to solve your problem? "The Universe will take care of your children", he is told, and although it may be true, it is cold comfort for any dying parent whose last thoughts cluster around the question, what will become of them without my love and care? With all of his dying preoccupations rolled into one overwhelming question, the one person in his life capable of attending to his children when he is gone stands gazing at the flight departure list, her baby on her back, and every penny he owned in her bag-- what will she do, and why does she do it? What is it that drives the choice that she makes? Is it love? Is it duty? What does she owe this man? And why would she choose to deny everything she had longed for? Difficult questions, often without answers, abound.

This is a thought provoking film, true and unflinchingly real in it's study of the characters involved. For the world as we find it is not black and white but infinite shades of light and dark, and it is rare that anyone is wholly good or wholly bad, or even wholly unsympathetic.

And don't think you can always predict what someone will do, before they are put to the test. Depending on the perspective of the others in our lives, we are each of us both heros and villains in one way or another.

In the final analysis, nobody gets out alive. You can't take it with you. All roads end in the grave. Life is a lesson about loss, and all striving is futile. The lucky ones who fight against the dying of the light think of those they love as their cares drop one by one from their cold dead fingers.