Life is beautiful, but misspelled... This is the premise: a backwards world in the eyes of a good man, with beautiful intentions yet too ignorant, and too overwhelmed by the world he lives in, to rearrange it all the way it is supposed to be
At some point, however, the clever premise falls through, and unfortunately, a true lack of creative work gives way to a lackluster ending with drawn-out scenes that bring no tension or intention, and make one feel that there is nothing there to say in the first place. It was a shame, at some level, to have such a stale climax for such a confusing body of a story. It made the completely chaotic development within the movie, that had a true purpose and that I comprehend and applaud, a waste of time, including the trite beginning/ending that could have very well been left in the cutting room floor (apart from the haunting dead owl over the white snow). Iñarritu visibly lost track of his movie, giving half-assed importance to stories such as that of the gay Chinese couple or the fact that Bardem's character could speak with dead people, while ignoring others (such as the relationship with the "spiritual" guide, or with his boy and wife during his final days
), which could have really given him the key to open the window of this "enclosed room" of a movie; a possibility that at one point Bardem's spiritual guide enunciates (without much subtlety at all, mind you: "go fix things up"), keeping us expectant and eventually leading us to much disappointment when the movie fails to deliver. Yes, life is a complete mess, yet there is always that hint of hope
the theme gets old and Iñarritu, at some point in his own mess, finds himself in the need of resolving without finding the right leads to do so, and is forced to simplify (i.e. with the Senegalese woman not stealing after all, or him passing on his ring/stone to his daughter
quite a lame example of a symbolic moment). There is something to this story, but
is it misspelled? In plain words, it should have been better
and when good things can be better, many times they are only overly ambitious, which is synonymous to mediocre.
