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Alejandro González Iñárritu is one of the most powerful voices of 21st century cinema. Ever since 'Amores Perros', followed by '21 Grams', and "Babel", Iñárritu has not stopped amazing us managing with each film to take our collective breath away. So imagine what he can do with immensely talented powerhouse Javier Bardem as the anti- hero of his new bone-chilling Greek tragedy. No wonder the Cannes jury gave Bardem the Palme d'Or for best Actor. Uxbal, a black-market dealer, learns he has terminal cancer. He must survive long enough to find somebody to take care of his children after he's gone. The clock is ticking. Death is coming. Iñárritu's genius is to make us care deeply for such a man. In the urban jungle we barely recognize as Barcelona, Uxbal deals in human lives, supplying black market labor to employers who exploit the illegal immigrants cruelly and shamelessly. He also "sells" peace to bereaved relatives, having the power to communicate with the spirits of the recently deceased. With all his supernatural powers, Uxbal is helpless in the face of the terrible disease eating away at his body and...

In the dirty periphery of Barcelona, Uxbal (Javier Bardem) survives operating as middleman in business with illegal immigrant workers in the Chinese community, selling the slave labor and bribing the police and receiving a percentage of each business. Uxbal has also the ability to communicate with the dead and is the loving single father of the ten year-old Ana (Hanaa Bouchaib) and the little boy Mateo (Guillermo Estrella). Their mother Marambra (Maricel Álvarez) is a bipolar alcoholic prostitute with an unstable and self-destructive behavior. When Uxbal learns that he is terminal with an advanced prostate cancer and metastasis and has only a couple of months, he saves all the possible money and seeks out a person to raise Ana and Mateo. Uxbal buys the cheapest heaters to use in the warehouse whether the Chinese workers sleep and the equipment leak gas and kill the twenty-five illegal immigrants. When Uxbal meets the African illegal immigrant Ige (Diaryatou Daff), he brings her home and after a few days, he believes he has found the appropriate person to raise his two children. The first thing that calls the attention in "Beautiful" is the city of Barcelona, totally different from the post cards or the Internet messages of garbage collecting system and looking like a Third World city, with slums, dirtiness and outcast people. The characters are also ugly and only the love and dedication of Uxbal to his beloved children is beautiful. The unpleasant story is gloomy and shows the reality of illegal African and Chinese immigrant and their poor conditions; the corruption of the police; and how people fight to survive, like Marambra says in a certain moment. Javier Bardem has a great performance in an ambiguous character. However I expected more from "Biutiful" considering the hype around it. Last but not the least, the optimistic believe that Ige has returned to raise Ana and Mateo. But the end is open to interpretations. My vote is six. Title (Brazil): "Biutiful"

I really love Babel and Amores Perros, but this movie is a big disappointment - the film does not present a new topic, nor a conclusion or an interpretation or anything. The whole 2.5h you just follow a guy acting really stupid, and it's painful to watch. This movie pretends to be really deep, but there's no depth at all - just a description of a miserable life. Sometimes plain neutral descriptions work, but surely not here. No question: technically/camera-wise etc. the movie is very well done, and Bardem is fantastic, but the script ruins everything. I agree with other reviewers saying that Inarritu should listen to the advice of screenwriters.

A divorced man with two children learns he has terminal cancer with months to live, but makes no effort to plan for his children's future. It's hard to feel sympathy for such a selfish person. It is not clear what his job is, but it involves a funeral home, black drug dealers, illegal Chinese immigrants, and gay Chinese businessmen. The presentation is confusing and increasingly dreary. Little more than a collection of random scenes, it quickly becomes so tiresome that one roots for Bardem to die so that the film can end. However, it goes on and on for what seems like three hours. It is hard to believe that the man who made "Amores Perros" and "Babel" is responsible for this mess.

Should have been labeled for people who want to suffer all the time during three hours. If you want to feel nauseated, please see the movie, I am sorry to say I was. By far the worst movie I have seen in my life. In fact I left 40 minutes before the end. I believe going to the movies should be entertaining or instructional. This movie deserves a different classification that has not been invented yet. Extremely Morbid. Bring your brown bag, you may need it. I have no idea how somebody could have written a story like this and be near normal. The worst is that it was nominated in Cannes and even won prizes. So the judges are in psychiatric treatment for sure. But if you like morbidity, sadness, the feeling of nausea, in addition, to adultery, graphic drug use, depression, multiple long time decomposed dead bodies scenes, well go see it.

"Biutiful" is devastating. Not only isn't it a comfortable and audience-pleasing film but in this case the story's really shocking, well acted and directed and, overall, terribly sad. The film is basically about good and evil, death and life and similar topics. These themes are very effectively expressed in its atmospheric and innovative photography. Iñarritu's camera gets to detect images of fierce and brilliance in the squalor. Javier's face is painted with light and shadows, as well as with a sinister appearance suggesting strong contrition and redemption. Uxbal's efforts to make some generous deeds before his death are rendered in a terrific performance, which manages to elevate the bleak subject to a sublime level. "Biutiful" is a work of extraordinary vitality and humanity, with figures of untarnished quality (Uxbal's children and the Senegalese immigrant who'll raise them after his death). On a personal level Uxbal comes to terms with the close death but eventually shows a vision of reconciliation with the life he must leave behind. Watching the film is a really a must.

Ordinarily I like these kinds of films about people struggling to overcome the odds of a bad deal.But in this film, Uxbal, the protagonist, has to struggle against every bad thing can ever happen to a person and all in a very short window of time. Death would be a welcome relief. Javier Bardem plays his role extremely well though; I felt his anguish over his children and the immigrants he "managed." His story gets weighed down, unfortunately, by the number of tragedies he must endure and the tasks he must execute. The director could have eliminated/edited a few of the off-point character traits and side stories to streamline the story for impact, which would have helped the film deliver more of a meaningful punch, not less. In addition, the summary of this movie says Uxbal must suffer a number of tragedies on the way to redemption. I'm not sure there is any redemption here. In Children of Men, the protagonist endures a lot and struggles through his own character defects to protect an black female fugee whose pregnancy provides hope for the human race. We feel joyful at the end of CofM because he has accomplished his task despite the odds. The ending of Biutiful, however, lacks a clear meaning and we're unsure of everyone's fate except for Uxbal's. The experience was depressing. I gave the movie an 8 because it was beautifully produced and well acted; the story was original, an uncommon view of Barcelona and the immigrants who go there for work under terrible conditions. But I doubt if anyone would want to see this film more than once.

Uxbal is a protagonist of the highest dramatical calibre not unlike Hamlet or Oedipus. This ailing father of two children and spouse of an unstable woman suffering from borderline syndrome and drug addiction, has departed on a calvary that seems to have no end. In ever more harsh and merciless ways Uxbal is undergoing every sort of torment and kickback thrown upon him by the demons of his gravely deseased Fortune. Indeed, Uxbal finds out that he is suffering from a terminal form of prostate cancer. Even though in essence Uxbal is a good man - fate seems to have chosen quite a different direction for him as where we usually believe our chance and luck to be. However, in this struggle from amidst the darkness of his daily existence in the messy streets of Barcelona Uxbal somehow is able to come to term with his fate without giving in to despair. In fact, through a gradual process of material disattachment he rises to a level of wise and unprecedented reconciliation with destiny as well as with the people he cares about and loves. After a long and painful journey of cancerous ordeals and unwanted horrors, at the end Uxbal is ready to make his last and necessary sacrifice before he can depart into the snowy landscape of his timetranscending visionary dream of a chanceful reunification with his grandfather killed by Franco's royalists during the Civil War. At the press conference in Cannes last May 2010 Alejandro González Inárittu declared in his vehimently articulate manner: "Even if darkness seems to be everywhere, Biutiful offers many touches of hope. I'd even say it's my most optimistic film. Uxbal's character is full of light. He puts a lot into organising his life, helping his children, loving other people." Biutiful is a truly emotional and even spiritual masterpiece of the most magnificent kind. For whomever is willing or able to follow the main characters throughout their dazzling daily struggles to survive on the shady side of life in Barcelona whilst persisting in their illusionary and mostly illegal follies that are the unfortunate demonstrations of their communal longing for some warmth and wealth and happiness, he or she will be rewarded with a discovery that might be as liberating and emotional for Uxbal as it will be for the viewer following his endeavours from so nearby it hurts. What Inárittu has tried throughout his ruthless, fastpaced, extremely honest, direct and intimate style of holding the camera as close to one's skin as possible, is to make us sense and realize that in the end their might indeed be something like a human soul after all. A discovery not unlike the one pursued by his tormented characters from that other masterpiece of his: 21 Grams. The viewer who is able to show sympathy for Uxbal, will be able to witness a most remarkable moral recovery in the inner self of our slowly but steadily vanishing hero. In a very humble but all the more remarkable way Uxbal somehow managed to keep some ray of light awake amidst the darkness that is closing in on him from the realms of his grim unfortunate reality. In the end, on the threshold of his toilet and bedroom and amidst the company of his daughter and a refugee he was so kind as to adopt in his house after her husband was deported back to Africa, Uxbal is able to finally reach the surface of his dignity again. This happens while he is literally dying and physially collapsing. But spiritually, his ascendance back upon the slippery slope of his generous but tested and tormented mind towards a state of peacefulness and grace, is a tour de force indeed. It is magical. Mysterious. Hopeful. Just like the entire encadrement of Inarritu's latest masterpiece. And just like Javier Bardem's amazing achievement to make us weep and at the same time feel happy for the faith that he was able to sustain out of the cold and unjust misery that chased him all along his final destiny.

I must say... I watched this movie twice. At first brush... I couldn't quite get past the pain and heaviness of the film... and at second screening, I really got to enjoy the (biutiful) visual metaphors that the director wanted to paint for us. It is indeed grim... and human. Like life, and perhaps a reflection of these days, not everything ends up happily ever after... we all are surviving each day in our own ways. This slice of family life, in a small quarter of Barcelona, is not glossed over and prettied up like most Hollywood films that we've slowly grown to despise (I know I don't speak for everyone). This is not the film that you go to to escape from reality... it's reality facing right back at you. It paints a perspective on the lives of those living on the frayed edges of our society, in every part of the world. For me, I think it is a pity that none of the Big Six picked it up for wider distribution. And that's the sad note for today's American cinema.