“Biutiful”

Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Starring: Javier Bardem,… “Biutiful”

Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Starring: Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez

Focus Features

Grade: B

When asked if he found his abandoned castle in the wilds of France a bit too gloomy, Pablo Picasso quipped, “You forget that I’m Spanish, and I love sadness.” Perhaps director Alejandro González Iñárritu had this sentiment in mind when setting “Biutiful,” a melancholy, ponderous elegy, in the forlorn slums of Barcelona.

The film — Iñárritu’s first feature since his contentious 2006 Oscar nominee, “Babel” — is an uncompromisingly glum ride, defined largely by the talent of its leading actor, the Spanish-born Javier Bardem (“No Country for Old Men,” “The Sea Inside”).

Despite “Biutiful’s” length — 148 minutes — its narrative can be conveyed in just a few sentences: Uxbal (Bardem), father of two and criminal liaison to the city’s illegal immigrants and occasional spiritual medium, is dying of cancer. Somehow, he must wring from the miasma of his existence a redeeming means of departure.

Without revealing too much, he fails on almost all accounts.

As perverse as it sounds, this is to the audience’s benefit: Uxbal’s deterioration is simultaneously painful and gratifying to behold — painful, of course, because he’s a singularly sympathetic figure, a resigned man who’s yet to catch a break, and gratifying because there’s hardly a star in the business who could equal his performance. Inhabiting almost the antithesis of his cruelly distanced Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men,” Bardem finds in Uxbal a man weathered — and purified — by misfortune.

Unfortunately, Iñárritu doesn’t share his subject’s maturity. “Biutiful” juggles several disparate storylines — Uxbal’s children and bipolar ex-wife, his ability to commune with the dead, the luckless immigrants with whom he does business — that, on their own, might have rendered a potent film, but taken together, engender something of a stalemate. The film seems to be a rumination on the forgotten souls of the 21st century and the futility of human agency, but it sells itself short by attempting to probe these issues in every possible context rather than choosing one and sticking to it.

Particularly bemusing is Iñárritu’s treatment of what should be the movie’s most arresting element: the supernatural undertones. Every hour or so, Uxbal places his hand on a corpse, mumbles a few lines and then leaves, apparently satisfied. Even towards the end of the film, when a catastrophic accident burdens Uxbal with confronting a mass of restless spirits, his powers of séance are devoted a mere 5 minutes.

Fortunately, “Biutiful”’s fickle screenplay doesn’t preclude a poignant ending — the sense of overwhelming melancholy Iñárritu strives so doggedly to summon is ensured by Bardem’s haunted grace. Ultimately, the title “Biutiful” is by no means a misnomer — even if, at times, it can only apply to its lead actor’s performance.