Biutiful (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000)

Reseña de David Bustillo:

The bookend technique, where the opening and final scenes are parallel or almost identical, is often utilized in storytelling. Used in various disciplines, for example in poetry, writing and cinema, bookends leave the audience with a sense of completion- they witness for themselves the beginning and the end of the work. In Alejandro González Iñarritu’s latest film, Biutiful, he cleverly incorporates bookends to illustrate the demise of his protagonist, Uxbal, who is dying from cancer. Despite coming off as a tragic movie centered around death and corruption, Iñárritu’s bookends highlight the circularity of life.

Iñárritu’s Biutiful is a change of pace for the Mexican artist in the sense that it differs from his distinctive style composed of a transnational setting, multi-protagonists and scrambled narratives. [¹] Biutiful, on the other hand, is solely centered in a corrupt Barcelona and features a linear plot focusing on a single protagonist. For this, Iñárritu has received criticism, “Making one character bear the weight of imminent death from cancer, a bipolar wife, and responsibility for both Chinese and African illegal immigration becomes simply ridiculous.” [²] On the otherhand, he has received praise for relying solely on a hand-held camera, which adds a feeling of intimacy and allows the audience to feel like a first-hand participant in the action.[³] Bookends, as stated by James Romm, “serve as a way to make the end of stories come round to their starting point and to mark their completion.” [⁴] Biutiful’s bookends do just that- it all begins with a scene of Uxbal entrusting his mother’s ring, which was a gift from his father before he fled from Franco and died in Mexico, to his daughter Ana. “El anillo es tuyo mi amor.”[⁵] The audience only hears them whispering and sees their hands in a dark room as he confesses to her his fear of the sound and of the bottom of the ocean. “El ruido del mar me daba mucho miedo… me daba miedo el fondo del mar.”[⁶] The exchange of the ring from Uxbal’s large fatherly hand to his daughter’s much smaller hand ends the tender scene and shifts to an image of a dead owl in the snow and then to Uxbal and an unknown younger man, who the audience later discovers to be his father, meeting in the snowy woods. In fact, the snowy woods are the Pyrenees, which inspires the title of the film, as Ana misspells in the movie her desire to go to the Biutiful Pyrenees.

In the Pyrenees, Uxbal’s father asks him two questions, first, “¿Sabías que cuando los búhos mueren echaron una bola de pelo por el pico?”[⁷] The first question, which not only is repeated in the bookend scenes, but also is restated by Uxbal’s son in the movie, Mateo, highlights the importance of the things you leave behind after death. According to Berger, owls are often referred to as bad omens or signs of death.”[⁸] Thus, the presence of the dead owl in the snow creates an eerie atmosphere and suggests impending death, which highlights Uxbal’s imminent death. The remains of an owl’s hairball, which consists of undigested bones, are undoubtedly insignificant; however, Biutiful reveals the importance of the things you leave behind, or Uxbal’s “hairball” for his children. [⁹] During the movie, Uxbal scrambles to organize his life affairs in time to leave his children in a good state, both financially and domestically, after his death. Uxbal comes from a family that is plagued by premature paternal death, not even remembering what his own father looks like; thus, he understands the hardships of growing up without a father. Therefore, he makes sure all of his affairs are in order before leaving his children fatherless.  Just like an owl, he leaves behind the family ring, stones for his children’s protection and manages to convince a senegalian woman to be their temporary care provider.

The dead owl imagery not only highlights the importance of what one leaves behind after death, but also the circularity of life. “The circularity of life and death… is always linked to rebirth, as in the natural life cycle” [¹⁰] What Uxbal once had to do, which was struggle to grow up without a father, will soon be the job of his children. The circle of life persists. The circle of life also highlights that death is not the really the end, but a seed for some other life. [¹¹] Despite an owl’s hairball not necessarily being a seed for another life, it represents the action of passing on roles to the next generation. Uxbal, exactly what his father did to him, is passing on the torch to his offspring for them to unfortunately grow without him. Further, Uxbal emphasizes to his children that he wants them to remember him, since the fact that he couldn’t remember his father truly troubled him. “No me olvides mi amor, por favor. ”[¹²]

The second question the father asks Uxbal in the bookended scenes is “Antes no había nada, solo agua salada. ¿Y sabes come hacía el ruido?”[¹³] Once the audience learns that the Pyrenees were once filled with nothing but “agua salada”, in other words it was once an ocean, it becomes clear that their conversation in the bookended final scene is Iñárritu revealing to the audience that Uxbal has died and is at the bottom of a dried up ocean with his deceased father.  Uxbal’s finally meets his inevitable fate and his father- the circle of life persists. Bookends are also utilized to show character development. [¹⁴]Once the audience sees the final scene and realizes that Iñárritu uses a bookend, the audience can see that despite all of the struggles Uxbal has encountered throughout the  film: a bipolar wife, a cheating brother and an inescapable corruption, he’s still the same man- he still fears the ocean and it’s sound.

Iñárritu’s bookends are pivotal to his film. They not only are a unique structural techinique of the Mexican director, but they serve a deeper purpose: they emphasize the circle of life. Through the bookends the audience not only witnesses the whole story unfold and pack itself up before their very own eyes, but the audience also witnesses character development and the significance and beauty of the paternal role. Moreover, the bookends tie up any loose ends that the movie may have left unsettled. Amidst all the corruption and grief that surrounds the film, Iñárritu’s Biutiful is indeed beautiful by portraying the circularity of life.

Bibliography

Biutiful. Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Perf. Javier Bardem. Lionsgate Films, 2010. DVD.

Berger, Cynthia. Wild Guide Owls. 1st ed. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2005. Print. pp 33-36.

Deleyto, Celestino, and María Del Mar. Azcona. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2010. Print. pp 46-50.

MacCabe, Colin. «An Amorous Catfish.» Film Quarterly 64.1 (2010): 59-61. JSTOR. University of California Press. Web. 1 May 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/FQ.2010.64.1.59>.

Mamer, Bruce. «Creating The Shots.» Film Production Technique: Creating The Accomplished Image. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2009. 16-17. JSTOR. Michael Rosenberg. Web. 3 May 2013. pp 84-86.

Parker, Gary. Building Blocks of Life Science. Green Forest: Master, 2007. Print. pp 18-24.

Romm, James S. Herodotus. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Red De Bibliotecas Universitarias. Web. 1 May 2013. http://rebiun.crue.org/cgi-bin/abnetop/O7384/ID691a9dba/NT1

Salazkina, Masha. In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein’s Mexico. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009. Print. pp 24-26.

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1.Deleyto, Celestino, and María Del Mar. Azcona. Alejandro González Iñárritu. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2010. Print.

2.MacCabe, Colin. «An Amorous Catfish.» Film Quarterly 64.1 (2010): 59-61. JSTOR. University of California Press. Web. 1 May 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/FQ.2010.64.1.59>.

3.Mamer, Bruce. «Creating The Shots.» Film Production Technique: Creating The Accomplished Image. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2009. 16-17. JSTOR. Michael Rosenberg. Web. 3 May 2013. pp 84-86.

4.Romm, James S. Herodotus. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Red De Bibliotecas Universitarias. Web. 1 May 2013. http://rebiun.crue.org/cgi-bin/abnetop/O7384/ID691a9dba/NT1

5.Biutiful. Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Perf. Javier Bardem. Lionsgate Films, 2010. DVD.

6.Biutiful. Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Perf. Javier Bardem. Lionsgate Films, 2010. DVD.

7.Biutiful. Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Perf. Javier Bardem. Lionsgate Films, 2010. DVD.

8.Berger, Cynthia. Wild Guide Owls. 1st ed. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2005. Print. Pp 33-36.

9.Parker, Gary. Building Blocks of Life Science. Green Forest: Master, 2007. Print. Pp 18-24.

10.Romm, James S. Herodotus. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Red De Bibliotecas Universitarias. Web. 1 May 2013. http://rebiun.crue.org/cgi-bin/abnetop/O7384/ID691a9dba/NT1

11.Parker, Gary. Building Blocks of Life Science. Green Forest: Master, 2007.Print.Pp 18-24.

12.Biutiful. Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Perf. Javier Bardem. Lionsgate Films, 2010. DVD.

13.Biutiful. Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Perf. Javier Bardem. Lionsgate Films, 2010. DVD.

14.Salazkina, Masha. In Excess: Sergei Eisenstein’s Mexico. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009. Print. pp 24-26.

David Bustillo, 2013.