Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA, 125 mins Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Danny Huston 21 Grams contains three stories of three lives that horrifically collide one day. 21 grams is supposedly the amount of body weight we lose at the exact moment of death and the film reveals Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and his screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga Jordan's poetic take on what happens to that tiny weight. Paul is a professor who will die within a month if he doesn't get a heart transplant. He's married to Mary, who is desperate to start a family. Cristina - a bit of a drugs, sex and rock 'n roll chick in her youth - is happily married to Michael with two daughters. Jack, an ex-con who has discovered God, struggles with his wife Marianne and their two children to make ends meet. An accident throws Paul, Cristina and Jack together sending them spiralling out of their own paths and into the destinies of each other. Iñárritu and Jordan have not made this easy for their audience, you have to do some work. Like Iñárritu's stunning debut feature Amores Perros , a car accident provides the lynchpin to three different stories. But while these stories remain on a linear narrative course of their own, 21 Grams blasts a hole through its three tales and allows the pieces to fall randomly. In the opening scene Paul sits on a bed smoking and watches Cristina as she sleeps. A few frames later, he is a frail man wandering around his apartment attached to a breathing apparatus. The jumbled editing along with the shaky camera work throws you at first into a state of confusion. But, it is the editing that is the master stroke in this film. Iñárritu presents his audience with a jigsaw to play with. Key moments of the characters' lives are glimpsed at: Jack sat at the dinner table with his family is cut with him in a prison cell; Cristina enjoying some time with her husband and children jar with images of her high on drink and drugs in a nightclub toilet. Gradually each character's make-up is revealed and we are able to piece together the fragments of their lives. Iñárritu eventually brings those pieces together into a cohesive whole in a powerful set of linked scenes: Christina rushes to the hospital to learn that her husband and two daughters are dead while a thrilled Mary wakes up Paul for his lifesaving heart transplant. Meanwhile Jack tells Marianne that he hit a man and two kids and left them for dead. However the technique isn't without its problems. In trying to put their lives into context of the present we know very little of their past. Paul and Mary's marriage is severely strained throughout the film but there no information as to why. How did Cristina go from wild child to suburban supermum and perfect wife? And what was it exactly that turned Jack into such a zealot? Still, these are minor concerns and take nothing away from its final impact. What may be lacking in scripted details, is made up tenfold by outstading performances. Considering the unbearable gloominess and grief of their situations, the emotional and physical characterizations by Penn, Watts and Del Toro are finely tuned and never over the top. Iñárritu and Jordan have pretty much devised a blueprint of a possible life. There is no real plot just snapshots of characters going through a crisis, love, revenge and redemption. And the idea that somewhere between the grave and the cradle, the profound issue of this mysterious 21 grams will settle. Sandi Chaitram |
