English 1301

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Rebina Karki

Pro. Charlie Warnberg

English 1301- 22064

May-02-2021

Title: Analysis of Biutiful Movie

I imagine that a cosmopolitan vision of the world, as expressed in art, could help us to

better understand the world and act with compassion, intelligence, and even grace in our lives,

but I do not know if that is true. The cosmopolitan connotes cultural and social complexity, but

sometimes complexity means more trouble, not less. Sometimes complexity results in confusion

and conflict and moral compromise. In the film Beautiful, written and directed by Alejandro

Gonzalez Iñárritu, with Rodrigo Prieto as director of photography and Brigitte Broch as art

director, we catch glimpses of the more glamorous aspects of a cosmopolitan city, a city that

could be New York or London or Paris or Rome, but is here Barcelona, the city and port

northeast of Madrid in Spain, a city long known for manufacturing and fashion and music and

sports and literature. Uxbal lives in a shabby apartment in Barcelona with his two young

children, Ana and Mateo. He is separated from their mother Marambra, who is a woman

suffering from alcoholism and bipolar disorder and work as a prostitute. Having grown up an

orphan, Uxbal has no family other than his wealthier brother Tito, who works in the construction

business. Uxbal earns a living by procuring work for illegal immigrants, a group of Chinese who

make forged designer goods which a group of African street vendors then sell. He is a psychic

medium to the dead and is sometimes paid for passing on messages from the recently deceased at

wakes and funerals. When he is diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer leaving him with only a

few months to live, his world progressively falls apart.

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Uxbal initially begins chemotherapy, but he later ends the treatment at the advice of his friend

and alternative healer Bea. She also gives him two black stones which she asks him to give his

children before he dies. The group of Africans are brutally arrested by the police, despite Uxbal's

regular payment of bribes, because they also deal in drugs. When one of them is deported back to

Senegal, Uxbal offers his wife Ige and baby son a room in his apartment. Meanwhile, an attempt

at reconciliation with Marambra fails when Uxbal realizes she cannot be trusted to look after

their children. As the Chinese are out of work, Tito brokers a deal to get them employed at a

construction site. However, almost all of them die in the night from carbon monoxide poisoning,

as the cheap gas heaters Uxbal bought to help were not safe. An attempt by a human trafficker to

dump the bodies into the sea fails when they are washed up on the shore shortly after, causing a

media sensation.

As Uxbal's health continues to deteriorate, he is plagued with guilt that he is responsible for

the expulsion of the Senegalese and the death of the Chinese. With his death drawing nearer, he

realizes that there will be nobody to take care of Ana and Mateo once he is gone. He entrusts the

remainder of his savings to Ige, asking her to stay with the children after his death. She accepts

his request but later decides to use the money to return to Africa. At the apartment, Uxbal sees

Ige's silhouette behind the bathroom door and hears her voice saying she has returned. Uxbal lies

down next to Ana and, after having passed on to her a diamond ring which his father had once

given to his mother, he dies. In a snowy winter landscape, he is reunited with his father, who had

died before Uxbal's birth shortly after having fled. Francoist Spain for Mexico.

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The film makes claims for the spirit, without denying the things that challenge it. Some of the

best testaments to the spirit have been made in art, in film and literature and music, in dance and

painting and sculpture and theater. It is arguable that in its diversity and flexibility, art has made

a more significant claim for the spirit than have religions, which tend to be rigid in their visions.

The revelation of the inner life is important work, and some people know it, though not everyone

does. Often if art does not garner fame or money, the sensibility required to conceive it, the effort

to make it, and the content of it, are not recognized or respected. Some people only see the

appearance of matter what people and things look like, and what price they can bring in the

market. To assert that an artist works every day, every hour, the cultivation of his perception and

understanding being a fundamental part of his work, but that he does not get paid for everything

he does as not every painting or poem becomes public, or yields dollars is an assertion that may

inspire laughter, sounding like a defense of laziness or a fool’s errands. Yet, there is more to

human existence than the material evidence that comes to the eyes, though film depends for a

great part of its power on that; and there is more to human existence than the money chase. In

Biutiful, after scrambling for money and encountering the great sabotage of a deathly illness, the

lead character, in a snowy landscape, meets a man who looks like his youthful but deceased

father, a scene that brings together different elements mentioned during the film - it is a dream,

or an image of life after death. Of course, I do not know what, if anything, of the human spirit

survives the body’s death, but I do know that when the spirit dies the body is worth little.