Line In The Sand
I’ve never forgotten a line that Hank Worden‘s cowpuncher character says about an hour into Red River: “I don’t like it when things go too good and I don’t like it when things go too bad….I like ‘em in between.”
Worden was talking about driving a huge cattle herd to market across rugged country,
but most moviegoers feel the same way. They don’t like films that are unrealistically happy or silly or dopey, and they don’t like films that seem oppressively glum and downbeat.
I can’t think of a recent “too happy” film that qualifies, but the reason for Biutful‘s 71% Rotten Tomatoes rating, it seems clear, is that a certain percentage of critics are saying, “It’s obviously very well made and Javier Bardem is great, but it’s just too gloomy, dammit, and I won’t have that…I want a few more rays of sunshine in my dramas, thank you.”
What they’re saying, in effect, is one of two things about their own life experience. Either they don’t believe that bad luck comes in streaks for some people, particularly those who lack sufficient funds or cushions, or they know that this happens but they just don’t want to go there. I’m a big fan of Biutiful but even I feel that the downish stuff is a bit much toward the end, but I know things can get that way (i.e., I’ve tasted bad runs in my own past) so I went with it.
It’s doing even worse on Metacritic (a 48 last time I looked). When your only unqualified rave is from Pete Hammond, and AO Scott gives you a “meh”, you’re in trouble.
It’s an objectively very good movie, and Bardem indeed, as EVERY REVIEW WILL SAY, “gives a TOWERING performance.” And that Spanish chick with the enormous nose who plays his troubled wife should also be talked up, though I can’t believe Jeff wasn’t cringing out of his theater seat in that scene where she’s naked on top of that bloated, shirtless brother of Bardem’s…
But, now to the Bilasphemy, I found it kind of bioring. And I do like and respect Innaritu’s punishing blunt escalating misery and uncomfortable examination of mortality, and there are some REALLY striking bits that everyone should see this in a theater just to see on a proper screen– that mummified corpse, those bodies floating up on shore, the bit with the cheap heaters in the sweatshop…
But even with the ever-escalating calamity and freed of his former screenplay collaborator’s multi-story shtick, a lot of the movie just feels like… Bardem kinda doin’ some stuff, drifting around town running errands and having prolonged conversations about his past, and while the narrative of this sketchy fringe dude preparing for his fate and being an awesome dad in the face of it all… man, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that sometime around hour 3 of Bardem eating cereal with his kids, my eyelids didn’t feel like anvils.
Oh, I also somehow neglected to mention the movie’s oddest element:
Why is Bardem PSYCHIC in it? And the movie is such that around 110 minutes into the utter solemnity and studied grit, you find yourself asking, “Wait, wait, wait… wasn’t Bardem communicating with dead souls about two hours ago?”
Yes, MINOR MINOR SPOILER…
…it does pay off in terms of the moving bookends and Innaritu’s overall thesis, but for the bulk of a VERY long, punishing movie, to say it gets short shrift is like a MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT. Literally there’s two throwaway bits where Bardem is doing THE MOST SUPERNATURAL SHIT THIS SIDE OF TRON, and it’s just kinda shrugged off and he goes back to being an anonymous black market goods guy.
From the mouth of Senor Droolcups himself.
Innaritu is the auteur that I just do not get the appeal of. I think his movies are pedantic and heavy-handed. They rub your nose in misery the way you rub a puppy’s nose in it when you’re housebreaking. I got to the “ripping the head off the chicken” scene in Babel and just said, “You know what? I got it, I’m out.” Left the theater right then and there and haven’t looked back.
You should’ve stayed… there’s a hot Japanese chick who’s all demure.
Haven’t seen it but I’m suspicious.
Innaritu does seem to be engaging in diminishing returns. I loved Amores Perros, and I liked Babel, but he really needs to stop with those movies where everyone is a chess piece moved into the worst tragic miserable event.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I’m sure you’ve had your bad streaks, Wells, but please don’t tell me that you’ve ever had a streak that included the following: cancer, poverty, a bipolar wife, a cheating wife, a wife who beats your kids, kids in poverty, spooky ghost hauntings, guilt over exploitation of illegal immigrants, more guilt after exploitation of illegal immigrants goes wrong, a drug-addled brother, a drug-addled brother having sex with your wife, spiritual uncertainty, police brutality, bloody urine, bloody urine combined with incontinence, etc. etc. I’m sure I missed a few things.
My problem isn’t that it’s gloomy – my problem is that it’s such ridiculous overkill that it becomes impossible to take seriously.
Also, given the way you dismissed Synecdoche, New York because there was some bloody poop or something, I’m surprised you could stick with this.
“Also, given the way you dismissed Synecdoche, New York because there was some bloody poop or something, I’m surprised you could stick with this.”
Phillip Seymour Hoffman is fat. Bardem isn’t. Wells suffers movie misery better when it only impacts handsome people.
“What they’re saying” and what “seems clear” is easy enough to fathom. Just read the reviews.
For instance: A.O.Scott thinks that Innaritu lacks the commitment and depth of a serious artist, that he goes half-way into serious, then settles for the banal and upbeat. It’s all there in the review. Not mysterious at all.
Popcorn Eyeglasses, when you put it like that, it makes the movie sound more overwrought and hysterical than I remember it.
The lasting image I took away from Biutiful is Javier Bardem eating cereal for 2.5 hours.
Aaaah, demure Japanese chicks don’t do it for me. I’m not Rivers Cuomo.
I’m with Lex on this movie. Can someone explain to me that fucked up strip club? What kind of trippy ass strip club is that?
Glad to see Innaritu is still in his “checking depressing shit off a list” phase.
also SYNECHDOCHE NEW YORK kind of sucks.
Hush your mouth, Disco. You’ve harmed your reputation enough for one night.
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Just back to the history.
Hank Worden (born Norton Earl Worden) (23 July 1901 Rolfe, Iowa – 6 December 1992 Los Angeles, California) was an American cowboy-turned-character-actor. He was raised on a cattle ranch near Glendive, Montana. He was educated at Stanford University and the University of Nevada as an engineer. He enlisted in the U.S. Army hoping to become an Army pilot, but washed out of flight school. An expert horseman, he toured the country in rodeos as a saddle bronc rider. During one ride, his horse landed atop him and broke his neck, but aside from a temporarily sore neck, Worden didn’t know of the break until x-rayed twenty years later.
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