Directed by Alejandro Inarritu
The director of Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel has again taken on a huge task, but rather that racing around the world as he did in his last film, Alejandro Inarritu stays in one town. He takes us to the parts of Barcelona that are far away from the tourist haunts that are romanticised in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona.
These are the places where the poor, the illegal immigrants and the people who are mostly invisible gather. It is a diverse, marginal, multi-ethnic world where people accept exploitation in order to survive. Many of characters are non-actors whose lives parallel those they are portraying, including Diaryatou Daff who plays Ige. A refuge from Senegal, Daff works as a hairdresser and supports 30 people in her extended family, including a son that she hasn’t seen for 3 years.
Uxbal (Javier Bardem) is peeing blood and knows he is racing against time, even though his life is so busy and complicated that he doesn’t have time to die. He is a humble man who is trying to survive; trying to save the world and trying to leave is family in a good position, even though sometimes he is tragically misguided. Uxbal’s life seems to spiral more and more out of control as he surrenders and comes to terms with where he is going and what he is leaving behind.
The image of two men in a snow-covered forest pondering on the death of an owl opens and closes the film as well as a conversation he has with his daughter about a ring. Javier Bardem is in almost every scene of this two and a half hour film as he takes us on a physical, emotional and spiritual journey. Like the film, it is a very difficult but worthwhile journey.
Lezley Herbert
