Biutiful is a 2010 melodrama/horror film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu from Mexico. It is a cinematic masterpiece with stunning cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto, which recounts a dying father's tragic life in his last two months. As for the film's primary aesthetic school, I think formalism is the dominant aesthetic school in this film, with some slippage from both the school of realism and naturalism. Furthermore, I will make the argument from the perspective of narrative design and formal design based on this film.
First and foremost, I think Biutiful is a thematically designed narrative film. The acceptance of death is a recurring theme in Biutiful. However, underneath the surface is the primary intention that I think is about the enduring quality of fatherhood in a dysfunctional family, as it runs like a circular motion that ends where it begins, and he never stops sacrificing himself. Uxbal, a divorced father played by the brilliant Spanish actor Javier Bardem, would do anything he can to make sure his kids have a father in their childhood. It is the fatherhood that became the source of motivation for all the actions behind Uxbal in the city of Barcelona, whether it is legal or illegal.
Another critical factor for choosing Biutiful to be a formalist film is the circular narrative structure in the film. Biutiful was a significant change of style for Iñárritu in 2010. This film broke the narrative structure of his previous films like Babel, which were non-linear storylines consisting of several interlocking stories of people affected by others' actions. His previous feature films took multiple points of view and roamed between characters, nations, and timeframes. However, in Biutiful, the narrative structure is mostly linear with a much more focused approach, together with a unified point of view of a dying father, Uxbal.
Uxbal's father fled from dictatorship in Francoist Spain for Mexico and died before Uxbal's birth. As we went through Uxbal's suffering by watching him urinates blood from an almost subjective point of view of the camera angle, we as audience are experiencing the world through Uxbal. He was raised without a father; He sometimes was too harsh on his kid, smashing the table to teach his boy some manner. However, he would not tolerate physical abuse on his son by his ex-wife; as he falls apart by his cancer, he still tries to fulfill his duty to support his kids. The story ended in the same scene as the beginning during the last moment of Uxbal, followed by a surreal moment when Uxbal meets his younger father, and it forms a closed loop as a circular narrative structure.
Meanwhile, the film does not have a clear three-act structure, and this circular narrative structure is one of the most distinguishing features in the formalist school. Realist films and naturalist films rarely use this circular structure. In comparison, formalists love to play around with the timeline and put the audience in a subjective position to have a deeper reflection, like looking into a mirror.
In terms of genre, I think Biutiful is a hybrid genre between melodrama and horror. As a melodrama, it explored Uxbal as the victim in a systematically failed society of Barcelona. Uxbal is a very complex character; he is making illegal money with cheap labor from China and Africa. Meanwhile, he wants to be a helper for those unfortunate. He has to deal with corruption from the police and illegal immigrants and drug abuse, and illegal labors in the sweatshop; however, he is running out of time. At the same time, Uxbal is a psychic who can see and speak to the dead, and I did not expect the horror elements until I saw dozens of ghosts hanging from the ceiling in the basement under that sweatshop. It almost felt like a psychological horror with a jump scare effect for a moment. Moreover, the mixing of genre is that formalists always play with, which makes the ending unpredictable.
I noticed some repetitive patterns throughout the viewing experience, which keeps me active for a couple of times besides the jump scare of the undead souls. The moth on the dark wall over the moonlight during the night are intriguing visual signifiers. In real life, the moths are very active during the night, and they will not stay on the wall at night unless they have finished reproduction; the only purpose of those moths on the wall is waiting for death. Iñárritu used moth as a visual signifier as an extension of Uxbal himself, is he waiting for death?
In terms of slippage of narrative design in Biutiful, I think the most prominent element is that significant events drove the plot during the key moments to some extent. Events-driven is a technique used by realist films a lot. Uxbal is adapting the changes from external forces like a police raid on the street, and over 20 Chinese immigrants died in a gas leak. All these significant events eventually shaped the character of Uxbal as he gradually falls apart as his health deteriorates. Another slippage element is the passive female roles in this film. In this film, the female roles were badly portrayed as either strippers or prostitutes in this male-dominated society setting; other female characters like Uxbal's daughter and illegal Chinese immigrant Lily were portrayed in a one-dimensional character. We have seen those gender stereotypes too many times in realist films.
I have to admit, the aesthetic school of Biutiful is a tough choice between formalism and naturalism. The optimistic emotion towards the end almost made me believe this was a naturalist film during my first viewing. Instead of what most formalist films did, which they grow darker over time, Biutiful is getting warmer towards the end. As the frame's aspect ratio opens up from 16:9 spherical to 2.40:1 anamorphic, while Uxbal enjoyed his last birthday with his family at the golden hour, the world of Uxbal started to look more expansive and colorful. Biutiful punched me in the heart by its cruelty in front of death, and then it gently lifts me with a small glimpse of hope. At the end of the film, this sentiment of hope is where Biutiful almost feels like a naturalist film.
From the formal design perspective, one element that struck me the most for Biutiful as a formalist film is the cinematography. I think Biutiful's cinematography is the most significant factor that distinguished itself as a formalist film from the school of naturalism. The cinematography is too outstanding from my perspective, and it draws too much attention comparing to naturalist films, which tend to go for more observational and subtler.
I could not help to notice how tight the shot is on Uxbal throughout the entire film in terms of shot construction. Most of the time in Biutiful, Uxbal is framed in close up in the middle of this hellish world that lies in Barcelona's shadow realms. The handheld camera work is shaky, and it might suggest a high level of anxiety from Uxbal and the desperate need to be in control. However, the shakiness of the camera starts to evolve when Uxbal meets his alternative healer friend Bea, and he digests the fact that he will die eventually, and he has to accept his fate. The camera movement is evolving into a more stable work, and the world becomes larger by expanding the aspect ratio from 1.85 to 2.40 and gives a sense of peace towards the end. Most of the shots are captured from a subjective point of view of Uxbal's perspective in order to portray his worldview the way he sees it. Once Uxbal decided to let go and starts to accept the arrangement, the camera jumps out of the subjective point of view. The camera becomes free during the last farewell between Uxbal and his daughter, and the way the images are captured illustrates this transformation of freedom of his soul.
Meanwhile, the change of aspect ratio in Biutiful is much more noticeable. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto distinguished three periods of Uxbal's final moments in the film by three sets of aspect ratio: 1.85 with spherical lenses; 1.85 with anamorphic lenses; and 2.40 with anamorphic lenses. Why did Rodrigo Prieto choose to do that? The spherical 1.85 images were shot to depict everyday life. The anamorphic 1.85 were shot to illustrate the troubling time of Uxbal, who lost guidance. The anamorphic 1.85 images are slightly squeezed horizontally, just like when Uxbal is walking across the bridge at sunset and watching hundreds of starlings fly in different patterns through the sky. We can see the bokeh's oval shape from the street lamps in the background compared to a perfect round shape in the spherical lens. This scene is almost impressionistic as he is going through a deeply traumatic moment. The anamorphic 1.85 was used here to create a sense of imbalance and almost unnatural look, which suggests his confused inner world, and he has no idea where to go. Furthermore, starting from the scene when the bodies of Chinese migrants were washing up on a beach to the film's end, the image expanded into anamorphic 2.40 frames. This more expansive view suggests an expanded mind from Uxbal after all the traumatized experience, he has finally moved on.
During an interview with Alejandro González Iñárritu, he talked about the frame rate was also changed to 27 frames per second when shooting the subjective point of view of Uxbal during the last dinner scene when they were having a birthday party. It subtly changed into a slow-motion of what Uxbal has witnessed. Although the slow-motion was barely noticeable and Iñárritu wanted to make a statement to show a hypersensitive character Uxbal has become during his final days.
This film has a rough texture and a grainy, saturated image in terms of color orchestration. Apart from the overly exaggerated nightclub scene where the colors are splashed all over the place, the film's visual tone is predominantly dark. Many shots contain a hint of blue and grey color, adding a sense of decay and desolation to reflect Uxbal's declining physical situation. However, rather than being a depressing film, the dominance of green color in the color palette and the indoor orange table light in the bedroom creates more of a melancholic glow in the latter part of the film towards the end. As the world of Uxbal coming to an end, the darker colors morph into a complementary color scheme with the blue bedsheet and tungsten orange lights hitting on their skin, culminating into a pleasant color palette in an extraordinarily beautiful ending. Meanwhile, Uxbal's ability to see and hear the dead is part of who he is, and there are no dramatic lightings to emphasize that part of his life. It may suggest accepting death as part of our lives, and as it has already naturally blended into it, and it is not necessary to highlight the differences between the real world and the surreal world.
From the perspective of sound design, the use of non-diegetic sound is emphasized in Biutiful. I think one of the most recognizable shots of this film is the bird scene when Uxbal walks over the bridge. The brilliance lies in between the camera works and sound design. As the camera follows Uxbal, we can hear all the diegetic sounds of traffic and a piece of atonal music. When the camera pans towards the sky, the image of the birds provides a counterpoint between the image and the sound. Where the diegetic sound of traffic faded out and non-diegetic sound tuned up as if the audience could enter Uxbal's mind from a subjective point of view, we can feel the emptiness inside Uxbal's mind. Moreover, when the camera pans towards the ground, and we hear the diegetic traffic sound back. This subtle design is almost like a transcendence moment of Uxbal, who wants to escape from reality.
In addition to that, there was one scene where Uxbal embraces his daughter and says goodbye to her. The audience could hear their heartbeats in the lavalieres microphones together with the scratching sound. It has a raw feeling from Uxbal that this scene has suggested that he has become a hypersensitive person who can hear the heartbeat when hugging during the last moments of his life.
There are a few slippages in Biutiful in terms of formal design. The most prominent technique it adopted was the shot-reverse-shot camera angle construction in most of the dialogue scenes. Moreover, for some dinner scenes, the shots were executed in coverage and cutting back from master shots to medium shots to close-up shots influenced by the realist films. However, it is also interesting to observe some changes of shot-reverse-shot and shooting coverage to a long take. Uxbal gradually sets his soul free, and the camera starts to lose control and embrace a free spirit.
