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| 21
Grams
Directed By: Alejandro
González Iñárritu Plot
Summary - Review 1 - Review
2 - CURRENT REVIEWS
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| College
professor Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) and his wife Mary (Charlotte
Gainsbourg) find their union precariously balanced between life
and death. He is mortally ill and awaiting a heart transplant,
while she hopes to become pregnant with his child through artificial
insemination. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts), having matured since
her reckless past, is a beloved older sister to Claudia (Clea
DuVall), a good wife to Michael (Danny Huston) and loving mother
to two little girls. Her family radiates hope and joy. Much farther
down the socioeconomic scale, ex-con Jack Jordan (Benicio Del
Toro) and his wife Marianne (Melissa Leo) struggle to provide
for their two children while Jack reaffirms his commitment to
religion. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is a very talented filmmaker – a fact which makes the often-riveting, but ultimately watered-down “21 Grams” that much more difficult to understand. Inarritu was the creative force behind “Amores Perros,” the acclaimed Mexican film which featured a timeline that twisted back on itself, an approach inspired by “Pulp Fiction” and the inspiration for subsequent films such as “Memento.” He also submitted the greatest short film in the 11-part “September 11,” creating a haunting mix of sound and bursts of imagery that captured the dizzying catastrophe of the day. With “21 Grams,” Inarritu once again incorporates his zig-zag style, defying the rules of traditional narrative to weave this engaging tapestry. Yet there is an infuriating misgauging here of the film’s emotional weight. In “Amores Perros,” the style added to the characters and their emotions. In “21 Grams” it inhibits what otherwise would be a heart-wrenching exploration of pain and redemption. Most critics have admitted that very little can be disclosed about this film without revealing its surprises. The truth is that “21 Grams” is as much about the experience of seeing it as it is about the literal details of the story. For example, rather than showing a woman walking from her house to her car, Inarritu shows her in the car, then in the house, and then walking to the car. For me to tell you about the house, the car, or the walk, I have already ruined the experience as Inarritu has intended. Viewers only know in the film’s first moments exactly what Inarritu wants them to know. We see Paul (Sean Penn) at three different times in his life. In some scenes, he is clean-shaven, accompanied by Christina (Naomi Watts). In others he is connected to an oxygen tank, dying, or badly bruised and beaten, near death. Christina, when not with Paul, is a mother of two and happily married to another man. There are some moments when both Paul and Christina are accompanied by a bloodied Jack (Benicio Del Toro), who also appears in jail and as a religious man, spreading God’s word. “21 Grams” is a movie about how each of these people gets from one point in their lives to the other, and the drama that drags them along their predestined path. It is a gutsy approach for a film. After all, not knowing where a film will go next is the biggest reason we go to the movies. To take away that notion of surprise and unpredictability, one must replace it with something equally intriguing. And for the majority of this film, Inarritu satisfies our desires. There is an event that changes the lives of Paul, Christina and Jack forever, an event that sets actions into motion which will destroy each of their lives. When the story reaches this point, Inarritu’s decision to use this framework suddenly makes sense, and “21 Grams” builds in intensity precisely because we know what is to come. What follows this turning point is filled with twists and surprises, yet the film’s acting brings cohesion to the melodrama. Penn, Watts and Del Toro are all deserving of notice in the year-end awards race, and Watts, in particular, playing a character who is repeatedly brought to the edge of emotional implosion, never once allows the gestures of her performance to overshadow her character. She is always Christina, in every moment responding as this character believably would to the horrors that come her way. But sadly, here we come to the film’s one, unmistakable flaw. As Christina reacts in a variety of horrible situations, Inarritu’s construction of this story and its surprises requires something impossible from the audience. He takes an A-B-C-D story and then tells it in D-B-A-C format, mapping the emotions of the characters so that they all break down at different points in the overall story but at almost the same instant in real screen time. The result is overload: An overload of emotions without added depth and an overload of climaxes without down time. Ironically, it is an overload that would not have occurred if “21 Grams” was simply told from beginning to end.   Check out Reviews, Commentary, and More at Zertinet.com |
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