The Beauty of "Biutiful"

A friend and I recently saw the film Biutiful with Javier Bardem. I knew that it would be bleak because I had already heard Bardem played a character who was dying. What I did not expect, however, was to see such an ugly underbelly of a world set in Barcelona, Spain. The entire film was shot in the slums of the city where Chinese immigrants struggle to survive in a Western European country. Uxbel, Bardem's character, has two children, a wife who is bi-polar, and a shady lifestyle where he is a middle-man for illegal activities. Essenially, there is no hope in this life for any type of redemption. Uxbel, however, though complicated manages to display a good heart in not wanting to give up on his wife, desiring to make sure his children are taken care of after his death, and endeavoring to make the Chinese immigrants' life better. Unfortunately, he dies without accomplishing any of these goals. His only hope is found in the film's last scene where the audience realizes he is in eternity and has been reunited with the father he never knew. The film would seem to hearken back to the belief that life on this earth is evil and that one must simply endure until heaven is reached where all the injustices of life such as crime, poverty, illness, and so on will be made right. My theology of the past has also taught these lessons in a similar way. Even though I now attend a church which says that this life is the "kingdom of God," it is hard to look around and realistically see the beauty of most people. In my opinion, the beauty of Biutiful is that it does offer hope to be reunited with our loved ones in eternity.