The good life

THIS IS the real Javier Bardem, an actor with a profound understanding of both his craft, and, it seems, the human condition.

After holidaying on screen in his last movie, playing Julia Roberts’ love interest in the light and rather frivolous Eat, Pray, Love, he’s now back with a far darker and tragic piece that displays the sheer breadth of his talent.

Directed by Mexican filmmaker, Alejandro González Iñárritu, the deeply-moving Biutiful earned Bardem the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, while also scooping a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Film.

“Since I first started writing Biutiful, I always thought of Javier Bardem for this film,” says Iñárritu, “Nobody else could have brought to the character what he has brought. Javier is not just an outstanding actor; he is one of a kind. He prepares exhaustively and writes extensive notes about his character. He is committed, intense, and obsessed with excellence, as well.

“But what Javier has that makes him so special,” says the director, “and what makes him so unique, is a weight, a gravity, an ominous presence on the screen that is based on his deep, strong reflectiveness, and his profound interior life. That’s something that can’t be learned. It’s something, angel or devil, that you either have or you don’t.”

The 41-year-old Bardem certainly has something. Few will forget his chilling, Oscar-winning performance in the Coen brothers’ dark thriller, No Country for Old Men, while his breakout performance, in 2000’s Before the Night Falls, was itself a triumph in the face of adversity: a film with predominantly European backing saw him headline as a gay writer, tortured both physically and mentally during Castro’s Cuban revolution.

Bardem even had to learn English to play the role, and yet so powerful was his performance that it earned him an Academy Award nomination, the first ever for a Spanish actor.

Since then, Bardem’s star has continued to rise, and he earned strong notices for his appearances in the likes of Collateral, The Sea Inside (both 2004), Goya’s Ghosts (2006), and Love in the Time of Cholera (2007). His last outing, the adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, Eat Pray Love, was an unusually slight choice.

“Actually, I did Eat Pray Love, because I need to go outside and to be in a lighter mood, in a lighter character, speaking about something that is more enlightening than the process of my character in Biutiful,” Bardem says.

Bardem shot Biutiful before Eat Pray Love, even though the latter hit Irish cinemas first, opening last autumn. “And I really needed to heal myself of the process of Biutiful, not because I was sick of doing the film, but because, when you are five months in that kind of mood, playing my character in the film, you really need to escape, otherwise you are going to get down for long, long while,” he says.

The film recounts the final days of Bardem’s character, Uxbal, a conflicted man who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality. Set in Barcelona, it’s a dark journey. “It had a deep impact on me, for sure,” says Bardem. “I had a very instinctive, emotional response to it. When you have this kind of material, you know you are going to jump into an ocean of doubts and fears, and also expectations and joys.

“In the end, with this story, it is a journey towards love, towards the light, towards the positive things inside, something that has become black, dark and difficult,” he says. Uxbal is a man of contradictions — a devoted father, broken lover, hardened street criminal, spiritual, sensitive — caught in a moment of sudden, intensifying personal danger and vulnerability, as well as transformation. “There are contradictions,” says the actor, “but, in the end, Uxbal is a normal person, who has to face a very tough experience, who has to face reality, and who has to overcome all this to leave a legacy for his family, a legacy which he could not have left in the beginning.

“He wants to leave something positive for his kids, something that gives them hope and something they can carry in their future lives,” he says.

The film demands much of its leading man, emotionally, as well as physically; he’s in almost every scene. “Unlike my other films, where I shot different stories with different actors over several weeks, this one was a very, very long and intense shoot, with Javier in almost every scene, always carrying the film, literally, on his back,” says his director.

“The precision and emotional intensity required in every scene was not easy to sustain. During the autumn and winter of 2008/9, Javier Bardem, the man I knew, just disappeared in order to give life to Uxbal. He’s a truly masterful actor.”

In truth, Bardem seems to have been destined for a career on screen. He was born in Las Palmas, on Gran Canaria, off the west coast of Morocco, and has two older siblings, Carlo and Monica, both of whom have also tried their hand at acting. Their parents, Carlos Encinas and Pilar Bardem, divorced when their youngest was still in nappies — his mother returning to Madrid with the children.

“My parents divorced when I was young, but I don’t remember it being bad, particularly,” Bardem says. “I was raised by mother, and my father died when I was 25, and I would say my mother and sister had strong personalities.”

He says: “I’m certainly not intimidated by women. But I remember the moment when my father died. I wasn’t a very committed Catholic beforehand, but when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious. I now believe religion is our attempt to find an explanation, for us to feel more protected. My truth — what I believe — is that there are no answers here, and, if you are looking for answers, you’d better choose the question carefully.”

BARDEM showed no interest in following his elder siblings’ into acting, and went on to study art, although he was eventually tempted into the business when Spanish film director, Bigas Luna, asked him to appear in The Ages Of Lulu in 1990.

He has never looked back, and now stands as arguably the most famous Spanish actor in the world. In July last year, he married arguably the most famous Spanish actress in the world, his Jamon Jamon (1992) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) co-star, Penelope Cruz. He is, he says, a satisfied man.

“Today, many people have everything,” he says, “and society is constantly reminding us of how happy we should be because we have the great car, the great TV, the great companion, girlfriend, wife, children, the garden, and dog. But still people are not satisfied. I think we all need to slow down a little bit.”

* Biutiful is released on January 28