re:mote voices

Title: 21 Grams
Cast: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Clea DuVall
Director:Alejandro González Iñárritu

In the last couple of years South American films have made something of a break through, a handful gaining world distribution and boosting the careers of those involved. Examples include Y Tu Mama Tambien, the director of which having moved on to the third Harry Potter film, due out this year. The Devil’s Backbone, the director of which having done films like Blade II and Hell Boy. Or Nine Queens which is being remade for the American market, with one of the roles taken by one of the young actors who was in Y Tu Mama Tambien, can be seen in the new Pedro Almodovar film Bad Education and was one of the leads in Amores Peros.

The director of Amores Peros went on to his first Hollywood film, 21 Grams which stars Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Torres and Sean Penn, a film which won Oscars and got some serious promotion. However ultimately 21 Grams is actually quite disappointing, and at times downright annoying. Despite the acclaim that came with Amores Peros, it was actually a flawed work – a series of three stories, all connecting to one event and to some degree touching as they unfold separately. However the middle story lost the momentum of the other two, and something didn’t entirely sit right. With 21 Grams director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu takes a similar kind of approach, three story lines affected by one event, and again it is traffic accident. However with 21 Grams he binds the story together tighter, so that the events of the three stories are directly affected by each other, bringing them closer and closer together. Instead of giving them the separation of three stories which play out as three short films with overlap, he cuts them all up into little snippets.

Perhaps knowing less about the film going in the technique may have created a different atmosphere, one might instead have been kept guessing, might have felt a certain sense of tension. Even knowing what has happened and how that plays out, one hopes that the events are cut with a deliberate manner, hoping that they will create a certain narrative gravity, where events spiral into an inevitability. Instead the cutting is quickly irritating, and throughout one is left with a sense of the arbitrary. There are some strikingly composed scenes, which provide a heavy imagery, working with the heavy performances – but these gain a certain over wrought quality, which attains a status of melodrama rather than striking ability.

The basic plot surrounds Benicio Del Torres, an ex-con who has found god, but accidentally kills a man and his two daughters while driving home, Naomi Watts is a recovering alcoholic, and the wife to the dead man, mother to the dead girls, while Sean Penn is a university lecturer who is dying from heart failure, though given an opportunity when he is selected to receive the dead man’s heart. Hence these lives are tied together. One thing that is surprising, especially given the way the film appears to be building, is that the event which triggers the link is never actually shown – which is a very stark contrast to Amores Peros, where the similar scenes are some of the most striking and memorable of that film.

I wanted to like 21 Grams, and I have little doubt that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has an ability with composition and mood. But quickly 21 Grams became annoying, self-involved and gimmicky, the techniques over compensating.

Amores Peros - trying to check the director’s name for 21 Grams I’ve just dug out the DVD of Amores Peros (which resulted in one of those frustrating sessions where its right in front of your face, but you keep missing it, till you are emptying shelves convinced it is there somewhere!). I noticed that the DVD had some extras – a couple of pop videos, music from the film, directed by AGI. There are also a number of deleted scenes, watching them now its curious to see how narratives evolve. How certain scenes might have explained certain things, but were decided to be too long or surplus. Leaving one with speculation of how things could have been done differently, and whether those might have been better? Also of note, is the repeated reference to Guillermo Del Toro, previously mentioned above as the director of The Devil’s Backbone, Blade II and Hellboy.