Okay, so I’m one of the rare people that has the uncommon privilege of sometimes flexing at work and being able to leave work some Fridays at one. When that happens I’m a lazy bum. I rarely do anything that one might consider productive for a working wife and mother. Me? I choose to go to the movies.
Trust me, there is something to be said about being at the movies by yourself. I know the movie theater is a very loud space, but I find it to be an almost private, quiet and silent place. This allows for me to be in a mode of reflection and escape.
I usually have to ask for help and I’m escorted with my soda and my nachos to my place. And then I escape for a couple of hours far away from my routines, the demands of my everyday life and I almost can forget about my cane and my weakened body.
Most times the movies do what they’re supposed to do: entertain me, at times even chuckle, maybe show me things I can appreciate like fashion, beautiful faraway destinations I dream of visiting and pretty people. But then you have the movies that touch your soul.
These are the movies I like to comment on. So, this past weekend I finally got to see "Biutiful".
I wouldn’t say it’s a movie for escape, because it doesn’t take you to a lighter place than yours…You know, where the homes you see are nicer than yours, where people are beautiful and look good even sweating or even when they cry, and in general, live a life with more means than you. Well, "Biutiful" speaks from the other side of the spectrum of light, prosperity and beauty.
You’re in Europe which evokes images of art, history, museums and beauty. But it shocks you because you’re taken into the life of a dying man, living on the outskirts of his society, who is caring for his two kids, and to top it he’s psychic and his bipolar and addicted wife comes and goes from their lives. The “hero” (Javier Bardem) is not a hero in the sense that Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford are heroes in our American movies. This man, Uxbal, deals in human trafficking, is full of contradictions and faces moral dilemmas he tries to resolve as he lives his last days. And it hurts to see the wretched lives from which he profits.
In spite of all the poverty you witness, the squalid places we, as humans, are able to call home, the activities we dare do to generate some bills to survive, the luminosity, the grace in this movie, if any, is that our humanity stubbornly shines through. Be it in the Chinese men and women that work in the sweatshops and construction industry or the African guys that sell knockoff designer bags on the streets where tourists conglomerate unaware of the dark underbelly of this incredible city they visit.
The movie paces slow and gives you no respite, not even when Mateo and Ana, Uxbal’s kids, smile and try their best at just being kids. Not even then because you're aware of that underlying threat that something more awful will eventually happen.
I didn't get a bit of relief until towards the end of the movie when I was able to cry the sadness I was feeling, when Uxbal holds on to his Ana with all his strength and asks his ten-year-old daughter to please not forget about him.
I know that this type of story is probably true and real in all urban places of our planet, be it New York, L.A., Mexico City, Sao Paulo, or wherever. I’ve always heard and known about the beauty of the city where "Biutiful" happens, but I left feeling that I really don’t need to visit Barcelona before I die.
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