London Film Fest 2010 - Day 15 - BIUTIFUL

Alejandro González Iñárritu's last film, BABEL, prompted one of the most excoriating reviews published on this site, as guest reviewer Nikolai, mocked its pomposity and pretension.  I was completely in agreement: it seems to me that ever sense his breathtakingly raw and powerful debut, AMORES PERROS, Iñárritu has done little more than create boring, overly-complicated, emotionally sterile films - beautifully shot maybe - but turgid and unwatchable.  Sadly, BIUTIFUL is no exception to this rule. Watching it feels like being in a lecture hall with a dusty old professor explaining why his theory is very, very clever, and earth-shatteringly important, and achingly sad.  As the minutes pass you get more and more resentful and start wishing for something altogether less earnest and more, well, entertaining.  And the tragedy is that Iñárritu is wasting his talent - his talent for creating arresting visuals, for being totally in control of the screen - and wasting Javier Bardem's talent too. For Bardem, arguably the finest Spanish language actor working today, and one of the best in any language, turns in an award-worthy performance in the lead role.  But to what end?

Bardem plays a man called Uxbal - a man dying of cancer, with little time left and many problems to solve. He is father to two children, still in love with their mother, but unable to trust her with their care given that she is an alcoholic.  So, he tries to amass a small amount of money in order to bribe a seeming stranger into caring for them after he has died. In order to do this, he exploits his gift of people able to speak to the dead, and cuts so many corners in his job as middle man for a gang of Chinese sweatshop owners, that he puts others lives at risk.  The moral quagmire is real and Bardem beautifully portrays a man feeling guilty for selfishly trying to protect his kids - and at the same time knowing that his attempts are essentially futile.  And as the movie grinds into its final stages, we should be moved to tears by his children's plight.  The problem is that our senses are deadened by the socio-political hectoring of the director - Iñárritu's pathological need to inspire liberal angst at the dangerous lives of illegal immigrants and children raised in poverty.  He wants us to feel, but ends up turning us off. And that is the greatest tragedy of all.

BIUTIFUL played Cannes, Telluride, London and Toronto 2010. It was released in 2010 in France, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Israel, Denmark and the USA. It is currently on release in Greece, Brazil and Finland and opens this weekend in the UK, Turkey and Portugal. It opens on February 4th in the Czech Republic, Estonia and Italy. It opens on February 9th in Indonesia; on March 10th in Germany and on March 18th in Iceland. It was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language film but lost. It has also been nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film and Javier Bardem has been nominated for Best Actor.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Visually stunning love story

Hollywood loves love stories. Take a look at your local cineplex and you'll find romantic comedies, a movie about a love affair between a ten-ton gorilla and a blonde chick, and even a romance between a landscape gardener and a coma victim. But up until Brokeback Mountain, we have never had a honest-to-goodness love story between a gay couple.* So, even if this film weren't any good, there would be a good chance of it getting recognised by the Academy on pure political correctness grounds. It is one of the many paradoxes in Hollywood: studio executives balk from financing ground-breaking dramas that tackle prejudice head-on. Instead, they pile money into sure-fire cash-earning gun-and-titty movies. However, when it comes to casting their votes for the Oscars, time and time again they vote for the very same "brave", "arty" movies.

Anyways, political correctness aside, Brokeback Mountain is among a handful of films that have made 2005 a vintage year for cinema. The movie tells the story of a twenty-year love affair between two cowboys, who cannot reveal their love for fear of violent reprisals. Unlike the heavy-handed movies, The Constant Gardener and Good Night and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain does not force its profundity onto the viewer. It tells an evocative story and allows the wider implications to resonate with the viewer rather than hitting us over the head with a civics lesson.

Two things should be noted about this movie. First, the breathtaking photography of Brokeback Mountain itself. The movie was shot by the Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prierto. He has shot a string of fantastic movies, including Amores Perros, Frida, 8 Mile, 25th Hour, 21 Grams and Alexander and surely deserves an Oscar for Brokeback. The second notable feature of this movie is the wonderful performance by Heath Ledger as Ennis Delmar, the shy and naive cowboy who is initiated into homosexuality by Jake Gyllenhaal. With this perfomance, Ledger has declared himself one of the finest actors of his generation.

The only real flaw I can find with Brokeback, and it is a flaw, is the somewhat weak performance of the "other" cowboy. Jake Gyllenhaal leapt to fame in cult-hit Donnie Darko and since then has been, well, underwhelming in mediocre flicks such as The Day After Tomorrow, Jarhead and Proof. In those cases, I assumed that bad directors had failed to extract his talent, but in this case there is less excuse. Where Gyllenhaal's accent fluctuates and his acting looks mannered and obvious, Ledger is a study in subsuming the self to the role. If Gyllenhaal's acting, or lack thereof, prevents Brokeback from being a truly great movie, it is nonetheless a very good one. I urge you to go see it and if possible, on the biggest screen you can find.

Brokeback Mountain premiered at Venice, and has since gone on nationwide release in the US and on limited release in the UK. It goes on general release in the UK on the 13th January 2006, in France on the 18th January and in Germany on the 9th March.

*The cinephiles among you will point to the Oscar-winning drama, Boys Don't Cry, which featured a romance between a straight girl and another girl who pretended to be a boy. I think this doesn't count not because of the sexual niceties of what was going on but because Boys Don't Cry was more political drama than simple love story. In other words, there was far more screen time awarded to beating up the "freak" than to the relationship between the two girls.

The Annie Proulx short story on which Brokeback Mountain was based can be found, in full, here.