Alejandro González Iñárritus Biutiful is very much the kind of unrestrained, thematically ambitious film made only after a filmmaker has proven themselves on terra firma following a run of work that has hit both critically and commercially. While his musings on humanity are as bleak as ever, and the film is unmistakably his most relentlessly gloomy, Biutiful is a confronting, powerful film that finds Iñárritu comfortably at his most audacious, topped by a mesmerising, should be Oscar-nominated performance from the ever-reliable Javier Bardem. Uxbal (Bardem) is a drifter, weaving through Barcelonas grimy underworld like a phantom, acting as a negotiator between the gossamer-thin illusions of authority corrupt cops and snide factory owners and those who rail against them drug dealers and immigrant workers while also having the ability to speak to the dead briefly before they pass to the other side, exploiting his ability and grief-stricken loved ones for cash. After a surprise cancer diagnosis numbers his days considerably, Uxbal comes to consider what his life up to this point amounting to little more than bottom-feeding and crass manipulation will mean for the legacy he leaves his children, and briskly goes about trying to make a better life for them before he departs. While Biutiful is far from Iñárritus best work that isnt a particularly weighty criticism given the quality of his output it leaves the impression of being truest to his vision, unfettered by the need to engage in strictly plausible physical scenarios for the sake of the real drama that typically gets Academy recognition. Instead, Iñárritu discovers grand emotional truths amid his peculiar brand of magical realism, and though the supernatural elements are smartly downplayed and massaged disarmingly into the gritty travelogue of Barcelonas putrid gutters, it is liable to be Biutifuls most divisive element. Though the film would play just as well without the incongruent otherworldly scenes, it is not these on which the films success rests; that is Javier Bardem, who not only runs with the ball, but jettisons it off to another dimension entirely. The success of the film lives and dies with Bardem, for while it is moving and dramatically potent, the grim reality of Iñárritus well-thumbed worldview may have proven too unwieldy in the hands of a lesser actor. In a film which is essentially a series of increasingly devastating scenes of abuse, exploitation, illness, regret, sadness and longing, Bardem surrenders the humanity of his deeply flawed character with heartbreaking precision. That he is able to make of Uxbal an even slightly sympathetic figure is his real triumph, and it anchors the perceived difficulty of the material. While certainly padded and ponderous at 147 minutes, Biutiful is brave, unabashedly heart-rending filmmaking, topped by Javier Bardems strongest, most nuanced performance to date, and he is unequivocally the reason that it works.