The Mexican-born directors Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro have been close friends, colleagues and compadres throughout most of careers that have included "Babel," "21 Grams" and "Amores Perros" (Inarritu) and "Pan’s Labyrinth," "Hellboy" and "Mimic" (del Toro). They sat down with theWrap to talk about Inarritu’s new film "Biutiful," a haunting meditation on finding beauty in the darkness and grasping at life in the face of death.
To start at the beginning, what was the genesis of "Biutiful"?
ALEJANDRO GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU I was shocked the other day that I found a book from a Mexican poet called Jaime Sabines, who is dead 10 years now. My wife edited a book with a lot of his writings and things. Now we are fixing our house, and I found this book and remembered that four years ago I read a poem, which in the very early days of the editing process, I wanted to put it as a prologue on the film.
It something like, “Somebody whispers in my ear/Gently, softly, every day of my life/live, live, live/it was death.“ It’s a short poem, but it‘s very impactful, very powerful and it’s very beautiful. And I remembered that I did this cut using it, but then I thought, maybe I am guiding the people too much where this film is going to go. It was more than a prologue, it was more like the sense of the film. And I realized two days ago that that was what the film was about, and I haven’t said it to anybody. That poem is basically a reduction of what the film is.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO There are such acute and minute little portrayals of humanity in the film. And that’s why I always say, as Sabines said, it’s impossible to judge how valuable life is unless you do it from the perspective of death.
IÑÁRRITU Exactly. That’s why I was shocked two days ago when I found it. I thought, why haven‘t I remembered, and why haven‘t I said this? Because the poster could be that: “live, live, live.“
DEL TORO You should have put it in.
IÑÁRRITU But you know why I didn’t put it? Two reasons: I thought it would be pointing out, and at the same time it was kind of pretentious.
DEL TORO I like it. It has a really down-to-earth thing. It’s not the type of poetry that seems affected. And you open with a guy with cancer, it’s not like you‘re hiding anything! You should have put it in.
IÑÁRRITU Maybe. Maybe if you had not been in f___ing New Zealand, then you would be with me and reaffirm what I was thinking. (laughs) And the other thing that I thought of, the title of the film was "In the Memory of Others." Because always I thought of the really desperate grace of [Javier Bardem’s character] Uxbal, and the question that we all have, which is where are we going after we die.
