Biutiful

Those were the days, when in morality plays people were wearing black hats and white hats, then came Sergio Leone and put the Ugly into the center, the human nature, unstable, treacherous, weak, until black and white faded and only gray remained in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven.
Biutiful, the latest Alejandro González Iñárritu movie is in the above context an anti-morality play, set to the bleakest possible world, or better underworld, of street crime, drugs, disease, illegal immigrants, sweat shops and lowering costs, but where the costs have distinctive human faces. The creatures that dwell at the bottom of the sea. A search for empathy, solidarity, kindness, love, seems futile in this world in which Inarritu searches for beauty.
And we have a perfect anti-hero Uxbal, a middle aged man, a former street kid, who did not move far away from where the circumstances have thrown him and also seemingly failing in everything he tries to do. He has problems connecting to his son, tries to keep his wife away from his children, he fails to protect his "client" street-peddler of counterfeit goods, a Chinese young turk is trying to replace him in his business of connecting cost-lowering sweatshop owners with people who have no better options in life and the police with its overt brutality (to which no-one objects) and covert insatiable greed. Ironically he earns additional money with (again seemingly earnestly) trying to help people (for a small fee of course) to pass into afterlife, but having problems accepting his own pending death from a prostate cancer. He is surrounded with a support cast of closet homosexual sweat-shop owner, bipolar wife, non-violent asshole brother and of course crews of illegal immigrants (if they still count as human, as for example in Children of men).
We have to give Uxbal credit for trying hard to do the right thing. He tries to help everyone the best way he can, he is trying to support his family, he is being loyal to his business partners and he treats them like partners, not like faceless numbers, he tries to help those for who we usually do not care about (even if for a commission), but he fails in practically everything.
The black street peddlers are being deported to their home countries, chines workers are dead because of cheap heaters Uxbal has bought to keep them warm in a cold cement basement. His children risk to become street kids (his own fate, he really does not want them to experience). His wife ends up in a hospital. But he manages to gather some money, to provide for his kids, all of which he leaves in hands of a woman, illegal immigrant, a wife of a deported street-peddler, no relation to him.
And there we find finally some hope, some grace, skewed beauty in this movie. Walking past the green shark composed of (pictures of) 500 € bills, Ige returns to take care for Uxbal's children, passing the opportunity to return to her homeland, reunite with her man, perhaps start a business with money Uxbal has left her and most probably live a better life than the one in the portrayed Barcelona barrio.
So this cough-ball of dirt of a movie, after all the wisdom, reflection seems to be dead (I cannot find any other metaphor for a dead owl) is a morality play under all its complexity after all, the only possible for today. There were times, when there was something to fight for (or to flee from, just to die alone in a foreign country shortly afterwards, as in case of Uxbal's father) and these are times of sharks composed of 500 € notes, whose bite is not apparent, but no less deadly. And here we can compare the youthful enthusiasm, hope of a better life (even elsewhere) of our fathers, with the disillusionment of today. At the end of the movie Uxbal is heading towards abyss with his young father (Smoke anyone?). So are we.

Carne trémula (Live Flesh)

`Somos un sueòo impossible' sings with her deep and almost inhuman voice Chavela Vargas in Almodovar's film `Carne Tremula'. And this is what this film is all about: a love story, which reaches and overcomes the limits of an impossible dream.

Almodovar, based on Ruth Rebel's novel, creates an imposing, intense film in his own, familiar to us, magical way. The film evolves and revolves around the lives, passions, almost Freudian eroticism and weaknesses of five different (or so they seem) people. The main protagonist is deeply in love with Helena and after a fight in her apartment he is accused of shooting one of the police officers that arrived to `rescue' Helena. Victor is sentenced to six years in prison. When he completes his sentence he finds out that Helena is married to the police officer he was accused of shooting. Victor is having an affair with the abused and desperate wife of the second police officer in order to come closer to Helena. How will all the characters react and interact with Victor's invasion in their lives?

Almodovar brings the characters together, messes their lives, crosses their paths in his own magnificent way. The way that the characters meet, react and interact is based on the principle of coincidence, which hardly is happening by mere luck. On the contrary, the coincidences seem so delicately directed and calculated that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to suggest that the reach the limits of genius.

However, if the primary principle upon the film is based on and evolves around is coincidence, then the second principle should be sexuality and eroticism. The whole film is diffused with intense and deep eroticism. More specifically, images of naked flesh are the primary target of Almodovar's camera. However, the direction is erotic without a trace of vulgarity. The Carne Tremula (Live Flesh in its English translation) appears throughout the film aroused, with powerful hot and warm colours like yellow, orange and red -colours that one feels that they have taken over the whole picture throughout the movie-. In addition, Flesh appears not simply as a material of which humans are made of but also as a projection of people's feelings and desires, as an extension of the inner self. The Flesh is presented so alive as if it has a mind of its own. It is presented warm and wavy, it moves and it comes together in a symmetrical, rhythmic but yet natural way. Moreover, whatever it is enclosed within the Flesh's periphery is following its erotic dance with the same colours, movements and breaths.

Almodovar is creating the profiles of five people, who look so different but then again they are developed on the same basis. All of the characters are moved by one and single thing: their strong, unshakeable and nonnegotiable desire to find and experience love. A love, nevertheless, unspoken, as it is only verbalized by the expression of the Flesh, the intense magnetizisation of two different Fleshes breathing the same air. All of the characters desperately struggle to maintain their other half whichever the means. In this way, the Flesh takes over the Mind and their desire for love becomes an obsession, a sicken passion which destroys their lives. There's no sense of logic and reality when the passion takes over. Feelings are being over-dramatized and the script focuses on the human relationships. Everyone betrays and is being betrayed. And that's exactly what Almodovar wants to highlight. Is it love a desperate voice of fear and loneliness or is it the absolute enosis of the Live Flesh?

When Victor says to Clara that their affair should come to an end she cries out `Please, don't leave me, I won't ask you anything, just let me love you.' The language used in the film is an unshameless and graceful manifest to the human eroticism. This particular modern, everyday language comes in contrast to the non-vulgar and sensual love scenes and even to the traditional erotic Spanish music.

Once more, Almodovar highlights the role of the feminine -a characteristic that is present, apparent and obvious to the majority of his films-, as the whole world seems to unfurl around women. In this movie Flesh is certainly a feminine representation. Moreover, men's actions emphasize women's personalities and characteristics.

The actors fall easily and willingfully into the director's `trap' and follow him to an endless dance of eroticism and passion. Javier Bardem shows excellent moments of talent which are going to certified on his later role choices (including the magnificent Before the Night Falls of Julian Schnabel, in 2000, which brought him broader recognition and many awards.) Liberto Rabal, from the other hand, represents the typical male, almost iconic model, of an Almodovar film, representing fittingly every woman's (or man's one could suggest) fantasy.

The desperate scream of the protagonists is identified with the tragic lyrics of the main song of the film `Somos un sueòo impossible'. We are an impossible dream.

No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy's characteristically dry, laconic, and sometimes hilarious dialogue brightens the scenes of this superb and chilling thriller the Coen brothers have ably transferred to the screen with excellent help from Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Tones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, and others, including a salty second layer of minor characters who look like they sprang straight out of the sandy soil of West Texas.

McCarthy, unmistakably one of America's greatest living writers of fiction, lives vividly in this, the Coens' first literary adaptation. Some of his best novels, notably Blood Meridian (called by Yale critic Harold Bloom one of the 20th century's greatest novels), are so apocalyptic, so embedded in their glorious poetic prose, as to be virtually unfilmable. All the Pretty Horses, from his Border Trilogy, has been filmed with some success (Matt Damon works in his role; Penelope Cruz doesn't). No Country for Old Men is late McCarthy. Post-apocalyptic, maybe. Jones's disenchanted, aging sheriff says, "When you don't hear sir and ma'am any more pretty much everything else goes." Llewelyn Moss (Brolin), a fairly innocent but opportunistic man, is deer hunting (he's not a good shot; he can't catch one out of a whole herd of them) when he finds a sprawl of wrecked vehicles and corpses, including Mexicans and a dog. There's a truckload of heroin in plastic packages and a briefcase containing two million plus in $100 bills. Moss takes the money and hightails it in his truck.

Naturally there are people who want the money back. Not nice people.

The man they hire to go after it is called Anton Chigurh. Expertly played by Javier Bardem, he's a villain--but with a clear-cut morality all his own--who's invincible and probably unforgettable. Chigurh is like the Grim Reaper: he can decide your fate with the flip of a coin; he reflects the biblical side of Cormac McCarthy, but in a terrible modern corruption. The crooks also hire another hit man, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson)--a mistake, because Chigurh resents the duplication. He is the last word, the anti-Christ. No man may come after him.

Out in these open spaces of West Texas--El Paso, the Mexican border--where Cormac McCarthy's innocent, pure-hearted cowboys used to roam in earlier decades, things have changed beyond recognition. This is 1977. It's a decade and a half since Vietnam. Lots of drugs and lots of money floating around; you don't hear sir and ma'am any more.

The story turns into a chase, Chgurh after Llewelyn Moss, the sheriff coming after them. And then Carson Wells, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and doomed, pops in to follow.

People have been talking about Bardem's pageboy haircut. Yes, it's creepy. Bardem makes Chigurh both threatening and inscrutable. It seems he'd as soon kill you as look at you. He has a long rifle with a silencer and a high-pressure cattle-killer device with a tank that looks like something a person with emphysema would carry around. It kills instantly with a pop in the head. He also uses it to shoot out door locks.

The film is more tense and suspenseful in the first half or so than in the grimly determined finale (all true to the book, if with a few details cut). By that time a lot of people have been killed and some wounded. This has some elements of the Coen's 'Fargo' and 'Blood Simple' (the latter introduced in an earlier NYFF) and thus with their most powerful work. But 'No Country' is an economical and faithful literary adaptation. Some Coen movies have been thin and frivolous lately. This is emphatically not, sure and riveting from the first few shots. Richard Deakins' photography, making much appropriate use of wide-angle lenses, is superb. Their distinguished source seems to have kept the Coens honest and serious (except for the dry humor built into McCarthy's talk). Unquestionably this will wind up being one of the best American films of the year. It's tight and vivid and suspenseful. It's great stuff. The images sing and stun. There's no distracting music, only the beauty and terror of real sounds.

Present for the NYFF press screening Q&A (moderator Lisa Schwartzbaum): Brolin, Jones, Macdonald, Bardem, and the brothers Coen, Ethan and Joel.