If there was ever an example of a brooding director, then Mexican director Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu would be it. Despite being four films in a successful and critically acclaimed career, Inarittu’s mind still wallows in death, life, gloom, doom, fate, and redemption.

What has changed is his approach to story structure. While his films usually split time between three or more main characters, Biutiful focuses on just the one: Uxbal (Javier Bardem) a small time hustler and single father.

When Uxbal finds out he is dying and his time of departure (so to speak) is near, he proceeds to put his affairs in order, which includes reconciling with his estranged, bipolar suffering wife Marambra (Maricel Alvarez), and raising enough money from his varied illegal activities, which often involves exportation and employment of illegal immigrants.

Set in the rough ‘n’ tumble of downtown Barcelona, Inarritu presents a bleak world rich in multiculturalism, yet enveloped in a suffocating air of poverty and hopelessness, as slum after slum and sweat shop after sweat shop combine for a completely depressing, yet authentic environment, beneficial to this story.

Complementing this environment is Bardem’s engrossing performance. The man knows how to play sorrow well, and here Bardem channels the dark depths of Uxbal’s conflicted soul to heartbreaking results. Like all Inarritu films, Biutiful is solely about character, and in the case of Uxbal it is his internal struggle to deal with the darkness which is his life, that takes up the films almost 2 hour runtime.

In his attempt to leave this realm with a clean soul (the afterlife is all but confirmed with the supernatural featured throughout), Uxbal must travel through his own personal purgatory to achieve salvation. This often means facing the consequences of criminal life, many of which are of his making, and lead to excruciatingly tragic circumstances.

Yet while Bardem is brilliant, the failure of Biutiful comes from Inarritu’s vain attempt to sidestep God in the attainment of forgiveness, for much like Clint Eastwood’s drama Hereafter, this film features a clear representation of the supernatural, yet is wholly agnostic in what lies beyond.

While not anti-religious, its denial of the role which God and religion play is equally troubling. Inarritu fails to tap into that most basic of principals that where there is darkness, so to must there be light, and his film suffers, suffers, and suffers as a result.

So please, if you ever see Inarritu, give him a hug. He needs it.