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21
GRAMS Rating:   (out of 5 stars)Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Producers: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Robert Salerno Writer: Guillermo Arriaga Director of Photography: Rodrigo Prieto Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
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Exploring darker human impulses in a realistic and constructive manner has always been a daunting challenge for filmmakers. Tapping into this territory often contradicts a film's basic need, at some level, to engage and entertain. Attempts to make profound observations about the confused, at times ugly state of the human condition has resulted in many confused, ugly films, and even worse, movies that try to mask their insincerity under the guise of a noxious artistic pose. When films that venture into this area succeed -- and the best recent example I can think of is Todd Field's In The Bedroom -- the effect is devastating. When they don't, well, it makes you appreciate the Farrelly Brothers that much more.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga, much lauded over the past few years for creating the ambitious and extraordinary Amores Perros, tackle a work of greater depth than their debut with their latest offering, 21 Grams. The film can be simultaneously exhilarating and disconcerting, involving and alienating -- it has the ability to voraciously grab your attention one moment and then struggle to maintain it only minutes later. It's a difficult movie, both emotionally and cerebrally, and when it concludes, you feel as if you've been partially worked over.
Telling the tale in non-linear fragments, with events unfolding all over the narrative timeline, Inarritu and Arriaga, for the second time in a row, use an accident as the key event that ties three separate lives together. Sean Penn plays Paul Rivers, a mortally ill college professor who receives a life-saving heart transplant. The donor is Michael Peck (Danny Huston), a man who has just been the fatal victim of a hit and run that also claimed the lives of his two daughters. The perpetrator of the crime is Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro), an ex-con who has been in and out jail since the age of 16, and is struggling to come to terms with his spiritual beliefs and his relationship to his wife Marianne (Melissa Leo) and their two kids.
The distraught wife and mother of the accident victims is Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts), a woman with dark days in her past, who has grown into a loving, well-adjusted spouse and parent. The tragedy causes Cristina to revert back to her previous vices and stirs bitter feelings of revenge. Paul, driven by the need to know those related to his heart donor, begins following Cristina -- in the process neglecting his own wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) -- and slowly, without divulging his connection to her, enters into a relationship with the woman, based predominantly on their mutual grief and an assumption that the elimination of Jack Jordan will bring stability to their conflicted lives.
21 Grams, tonally, is reminiscent of Paul Schrader's Affliction -- a film steeped in emotion but expressing it through a somewhat detached vehicle. Inarritu is both a visceral and sophisticated artist -- his aesthetic is undeniably 21st century, but there's a purity and intensity to his vision that's solely informed by the material. He doesn't betray his characters or his story, and his directorial choices aren't infected by stylistic indulgence; there's no vanity in his artistic philosophy.
But Inarritu's thematic obsessions -- mainly the immediate turbulence of inner human conflict -- can become overly narrow in design. While screenwriter Arriaga claims that his script has no religious motivation, the idea of transcendence and fate are at the core of the drama. These concepts, as presented in film, benefit mostly highly from visual approaches that are more stoic, in effect making them more reflective (examples would be the films of Yasujiro Ozu and Robert Bresson). Distance, both emotionally and visually, is what's lacking here. Inarritu and D.P. Rodrigo Preito put all of their eggs in one basket -- shooting almost exclusively hand held, using tight, suffocating compositions (accentuated by the familiar de-saturated look) to frame their subjects, and it leaves you precious little room to breathe. There is one notable exception to this practice -- the best moment in the film -- when Inarritu locks down his camera and lets it rest statically on a well-manicured suburban lawn, while the tragic accident takes place off screen. It is here that Inarritu, through visual simplicity, makes his most complex, powerful statement.
In a stellar cast, Naomi Watts shines the brightest. There's a directness to her performance which would've connected regardless of the visual style brought to the film. Sean Penn's role is less showy than the one that allowed his seething, combustible performance in Mystic River, but in some ways it presents more of a challenge. The emotion here is all repressed, the most telling signs of his character lies in what he doesn't say. Much the same can be said for Benicio Del Toro's Jack Jordan, and the actor wears the entirety of his character's history in his every expression and movement. Del Toro could almost play the role without the aid of any dialogue and you'd understand Jack.
21 Grams is a film that one shouldn't be too quick to judge either way. The vast majority of the movie's strengths and flaws are those that are readily apparent, but the meat of 21 Grams lies in its vague, elusive areas that you will ponder for days after having seen the movie. And that is the irrefutable sign of intelligent, effective, and well-crafted art.
(A Focus Features release. Opens in
New York and Los Angeles on November 21, 2003. Expands to more
cities at later dates.)
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