The Beloved

Hollywood has mined some of its most heartfelt and human material from the obsession it has with itself, from Fellini’s magical 8½, to the emotional powerhouse of last year’s Sentimental Value. The Beloved continues this trend, examining the toll the life of an artist takes on both themselves and their loved ones. Javier Bardem is magnetic as the notoriously hot-headed filmmaker who hires his estranged daughter as the lead in a historical epic that examines Spain’s colonial impact on Western Sahara. Though the comparison is a little heavy-handed, the project aptly begins to examine the effect his lifestyle has had on her.

As personal and professional lives intertwine, much of what has gone unsaid for some long bursts forth and threatens to overrun the production. Bardem and Victoria Luengo are a wonderful pairing, balancing essential chemistry with a cool distance that feels at once natural, and yet forced into being by the characters. They match each other’s energy as two tigers made to share a cage would, cautiously respectful yet never far from explosive.

The film masterfully shows the complexity and dedication needed for filmmaking, with every department represented and every minute decision analysed in depth. The artform demands devotion and perfection to succeed, showcased brilliantly in one scene where we remain for an uncomfortable length of time with the cast and crew as they struggle to film a few lines of dialogue. Bardem throws his ire around like the nasty ringmasters we often hear about directors becoming, whilst his personal connection to Luengo boils away underneath. They each have one of the greatest gifts an actor can hope for, a face that can hold counterpoint emotions simultaneously. Some distracting black and white at points, and a runtime that’s perhaps twenty minutes overlong, can take nothing away from this central scene. If it were a short film on its own, it would be a masterpiece of the medium.

The Beloved works as an examination both of the filmmaking process and of how successful artists (nearly always men) are allowed to ride roughshod over as many people as needed in the pursuit of their work. What do a few ordinary lives being disrupted matter in the face of an Oscar-winner’s next masterpiece? As plenty of the workers on the film within a film are happy to state, when you’re working with a legend, rules don’t apply.