Movie: Biutiful

After being wowed by Birdman I decided to look into the other films of director Alejando Gonzalez Inarritu.

I think I must've seen most of Biutiful somewhere before, because most of it was vaguely familiar. Late at night, when I was half asleep or something -- because it was never fully familiar. And it's only five years old.

Did I do a review of it already?

The story is RELENTLESSLY downbeat. Hugely depressing. Javier Bardem plays a petty hustler, smuggling immigrants, selling counterfeit handbags, scratching out a living in the slums of Barcelona. He has two small children and a bi-polar wife who can't live with them.

Then he gets diagnosed with cancer.

Cheery, right? To the director's credit the film is beautifully shot and totally believable. It's just not a film one would savor over and over again.

Sean Penn compared Bardem's performance to Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. That sounds like an apt comparison, having revisited Last Tango recently. Both are powerful, powerful performances in stories that are painful to watch.

I felt the same way about No Country For Old Men by the way, a fabulous production that was too disturbing to ever want to repeat the experience. Does that make me a Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?

Yeah, pretty much.

Inarritu's first three films -- and he's only done five -- are considered "The Death Trilogy." Each (so far as I can tell) tells a story from four different viewpoints, with four different protagonists whose stories intersect.

Kinda like Crash or, what was that other one?

Anyway, I now have Amore Perres, 21 Grams and Babel on hand and will be delving into them over the next few days.

Rashomon is the first thing that sprang to my mind.

I was thinking of Grand Canyon.