Uxbal lives a very poor life in a poor region of Barcelona, Spain that has many immigrants, and he makes money by procuring work for illegal immigrants. Also, he is able to talk to the souls of the deceased so relatives of the deceased sometimes ask him to converse with the dead at funerals as a medium. Uxbal lives with his two young children separate from his wife who is unable to raise children due to her bipolar disorder. Meanwhile, he is diagnosed with terminal cancer with only a short time left for him to live. When the husband of a family of illegal immigrants from Senegal is deported, Uxbal unexpectedly starts living with the wife of the family Ige and her baby. Watching Ige gently care and nurse her own child, Uxbal gives everything he owns to Ige and asks that she take care of his children after he dies. The movie ends on the day Ige secretly leaves the apartment with the money to return to Senegal and Uxbal dies.
The movie’s ending is extremely ambiguous. Whether or not Ige returns at the end, her voice that answers, “I’m back” may have been imagined by Uxbal, or perhaps the daughter answered in place of Ige. Another possible interpretation is that Ige was killed by a robber when carrying a large amount of money and only her dead spirit returned. I have seen the following conversation on a discussion site for this movie: “Did Ige come back in the end?” “I’m sad she stole the money since she’s a good person.” “Ige’s voice is just Uxbal’s imagination.” “No, in an interview with the director, he said that she came back.” “Oh, then I’m very glad.” “Yeah, there is no hope if she just stole everything.”
What a nice conversation. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu would surely be asked the same thing time and time again by fans with wet eyes. It must be an utmost reward for a director to make a movie that is able to capture the hearts of the audience. I also think that Ige returned to Uxbal’s home in the end.
It is said that Barcelona now ranks next to London as the second most fashionable city in the world (passing up Paris and New York!). Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona depicts the beautiful side of the city for tourists to see, but this movie depicts the other side. Since ancient times, there has been conflict between the Catalonians living in Barcelona and the Spaniards in Madrid. In order to destroy Catalonian culture, Generalísimo Franco endorsed the immigration of Spaniards into the Catalonia district and prohibited Catalan from being spoken. Among Catalonians, the lower class was pushed into the slums of Barcelona and these people began to be called “xarnego.” Uxbal is a “xarnego”; Uxbal’s father opposed Franco’s policies and, his life in danger, he fled overseas and died young in Mexico.
This movie depicts the dark themes of cancer and the livelihood of the most extreme lower class; despite the darkness, the movie evokes a lot of sympathy and somehow provides us with a ray of hope after the movie is over. This is because Uxbal is depicted with an extremely beautiful heart and as a deeply caring person. However, he is not a perfect person. The reason the title is “Biutiful” instead of “Beautiful” is that there is something missing in him that keeps him from being a perfectly beautiful person. What he is missing is wisdom. He sympathizes with the Chinese immigrants living in the worst conditions so he buys them a heater, but the heater is poor quality and generates toxic gas so eventually all the Chinese immigrants living together in the large room die. Since he earns his money from the underworld, he can’t deposit his money in the bank, he has no health insurance to treat his cancer, he can’t decide what to do with his poor children after he dies, and can’t die in peace. The only person he can rely on is a stranger Ige so he leaves her everything he has at the end. However, this wisdom and these secrets to success are learned from parents and society. It can be said that it is the result of Franco’s suppression that there weren’t parents to grant such wisdom to Uxbal and also that the discrimination toward “xarnego” limited education and prevented them from getting proper jobs. It’s a vicious cycle in a bad system. This movie seems to criticize the societal system indirectly by depicting Uxbal with an unwise, but beautiful heart. Uxbal’s ability to communicate with the dead may be the extreme result of the combination of his pure heart and lack of education.
When I watched director Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding, I got the impression that the director used cancer as a convenient tool to move the story along, and I wasn’t able to like that movie. In contrast, I found how cancer was handled in Biutiful to be convincing. I think director Alejandro González Iñárritu understands death intellectually and emotionally. The scene where a fellow medium talks to Uxbal and she calmly tells him, “You are going to die soon. Put your affairs in order before your death,” is very impressive. Most people don’t think about their own death and most of the time death comes suddenly. However, in the case of cancer, death comes calmly and slowly. One is given time to prepare for death and reflect over their own life. Nowadays, cancer isn’t the “fatal disease” anymore. It’s possible to come back from cancer. I live in America, but have met many people who came back from cancer and many of them say that experiencing cancer was the most fortunate thing in their lives. I can understand this mindset 100%.
I’ve watched all of director Iñárritu’s movies; there is an underlying sentiment in his heart about “every encounter is unique and should be cherished” or “the cycle of death and rebirth” that a Japanese person can connect with. His thought would be that people in this world are connected endlessly in unexpected ways, and life develops from these encounters. Therefore, the human connection spreads across national borders. Director Iñárritu does not talk about what happens to a spirit after death. However, he may believe in something like a spirit that is inherited by our children and the people of the next generation after our death. Therefore, living to give to the next generation is living for oneself.
Director Iñárritu is from Mexico, but now lives together with his family in Los Angeles. This is not a betrayal of his native country Mexico at all, but rather may be for the sake of a job, due to concerns over raising children in Mexico which is becoming particularly dangerous these days, or for the benefit of gaining multiple perspectives by living in two countries. The reason I believe Ige actually came back is because Ige is in a similar situation. When her husband was deported and forced back to Senegal, he told Ige to never come back to Senegal and try hard to stay in Spain with the children. Children born in Spain are Spanish citizens, so as the child’s mother, she can stay in Spain. Compared to the poor life waiting if she returns to Senegal, life in the lowest class of Barcelona is easier and there are hopes for the future of her children. This is the determination of a parent.
This movie competed and lost against director Susanne Bier’s In a Better World in the 2010 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Susanne Bier said, “Humans tend to desire revenge over small things. I thought this was interesting and made this movie.” Even though In a Better World got the Academy Award, it doesn’t mean Biutiful is inferior. At least director Iñárritu won’t say, “Sure, that’s kind of interesting, so I made a movie out of it.”