I think it was because my mind was full of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount that the film called Biutful made such an impression on me. I was preparing a sermon and this film seemed to read my mind: it was about the very thing Christ was talking about, but they had got it wrong. Just as the main character, called Uxbal, got it wrong when he tried to spell beautiful. Surely he is a good man.
Even before he discovered in the opening scenes of the film that he had only two months to live, his every thought seemed to focus on looking after his two children. It is lovely to see him with them. Surely he could empathise when Christ called God our Father. Maybe it was too much for him to believe God would look after them when he was gone, so to do a ‘greater good’ he would say he did a ‘little wrong’. He was already involved in minor crime, now he seeks to maximize the money he can leave them when he dies, so that they will be provided for. We increasingly see large wads of notes being exchanged, but his anxiety only increases.
Christ was reassuring us that God, our Father, knows what we need, so Jesus said there was no need to worry. But Uxbal did worry and the film goes on to show just how fruitless his worry was; not just fruitless but disastrous. He bribes the police so that African illegals can trade on the streets. The police raid them and arrest Uxbal too. At this point there is a wonderful scene when an angry Uxbal accuses the police captain of bad faith, only to be made aware that his friends were in bad faith in selling drugs. Uxbal angrily defends himself saying he only does it for his children. The Police Captain replies that he only does it for his daughter.
Good intentions do not stop the violence from escalating or the results being deadly. The Police Captain tells a story of his friend who looked after tigers. He fed them daily in their cages; for six years they licked his hands. Then one day a tiger bit his head off. The Policeman smiled without humour, ‘that is this city today; dog eats dog, and man eats man’. None of Uxbal’s plans work out. Always there is deceit. Always the tiger bites the head off: those he sought to help always suffer, the children are left penniless, the Africans will be deported and the exploited Chinese labourers die. The message is terribly clear: the way of crime does not work. Do not be like them, Christ said, your Father knows what you need before you ask him.