Biutiful - a heartbreaking, honest and powerful picture from Mexican auteur Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams, Birdman, The Revenant). Uxbal, portrayed by Javier Bardem, is a criminal middleman, facilitating human traffickers and dishonest street peddlers in the heart of Barcelona. Despite being submerged in a corrupt and unforgiving criminal environment, Uxbal seems to take a modest and moral turn. While uncharacteristically demanding heaters for a dark and freezing basement, in which illegal Chinese labourers slept, he comes to terms with his financial woes and his regretful inability to support his beloved children. When Uxbal is diagnosed with cancer, he desperately thrives to leave his children in better positions.

Iñárritu’s Biutiful premiered at Cannes in May 2010 with Bardem winning Best Actor. The feature was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards, with Bardem also receiving a Best Actor nomination. This made his performance the first entirely Spanish-language enactment selected for the award. The moving plot, emotionally harrowing and highly expressive, is also aesthetically strong and profoundly compassionate – much like its score. It’s the extreme moments of refinement, grief and hurt that left critics and audiences overwhelmed. All enhanced by the music.

The score which features on this edition of Secret Soundtrack is composed by Argentine musician Gustavo Santaolall – a double Academy Award and BAFTA winner. Santaolalla career began during his teenaged years, being the founding member of Argentine rock band Arco Iris. After fleeing his home country due to military dictatorship, Santaolalla moved to LA to pursue his musical ambition. Biutiful’s score is not your typical film arrangement; Santaolall takes a more traditional approach to his composition with its instrumentation, harmony, and timbre embedded in Hispanic roots. A structure far from linear, the score reflects a distinct collection of musical experts deeply influenced by melodies of old, yet entirely modernised. The resonances are harsh and delicately atonal utilising minimal textured elements and unusual objects, not necessarily associated with traditional music-making for film.

Complex time-signatures result in a score which echoes masterfully crafted experimentation, perfectly complementing the deep and heartfelt style of Iñárritu’s imagery and plot. From the atmospheric, note-clustered whirrs of ‘Migraine’, to the delicate and dreamy guitar sequences of ‘Gedeik’ – the score evokes emotion and creates fluctuating atmospheres in abundance. It’s grainy, dirty qualities - combined with the drone-like soundscapes - prove Biutiful’s score was born for the vinyl format. It’s a work which isn’t suited to a digital context. As part of the Secret Soundtrack subscription, Zavvi have released 500 copies of this soundtrack, each numbered to guarantee exclusivity.