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Director - Alejandro
González Iñárritu.
Writer - Guillermo Arriaga.
Director of photography - Rodrigo Prieto.
Editor - Stephen Mirrione.
Music - Gustavo Santaolalla.
Production designer - Brigitte Broch.
Producers - Alejandro González Iñárritu and Robert Solerno.
Released by Focus Features.
125 minutes. Rated R.
STARRING: Sean Penn (Paul Rivers), Benicio Del Toro (Jack Jordan), Naomi
Watts (Cristina Peck), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Mary Rivers), Melissa Leo
(Marianne Jordan), Clea DuVall (Claudia Williams) and Danny Huston
(Michael Williams).
Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who
previously delivered the critically acclaimed Amores Perros, is
back with yet another testament to his formidable filmmaking talents.
21 Grams boasts brilliant cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto,
several unforgettably intense sequences, and commanding performances
from Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and especially Benicio Del Toro.
Just as he did in Iñárritu’s earlier film, screenwriter Guillermo
Arriaga provides a trio of crisscrossing narratives that overlap in a
central, traumatizing event. And once again, the stories are chopped
into mincemeat and scattered, leaving us to piece together their proper
chronological order.
This confusion of chronology, which has become so popular since Pulp
Fiction, may add to the film’s fascination for some, but the
question must be asked: Does this contribute to our understanding of the
film as a meaningful work of art, as it does in the writing of Faulkner?
Or does it merely throw us off-balance, using an artificial device to
engage us in what would otherwise become evident as a rather
preposterous bit of storytelling?
For this reviewer, 21 Grams is unfortunately an example of the
latter. While Iñárritu clearly has profound questions on his mind, he
does not seem as interested in answering them as he does in smacking the
audience around. His disorienting storytelling devices certainly keep us
on our toes, but they seem ultimately designed to shock and manipulate
our emotions rather than guide us to edifying reflection.
21 Grams refers, I am told, to the amount of weight that
allegedly leaves the body at the moment of death. By implication, it
represents the soul. Making this the title of the movie is a fine
example of Iñárritu’s inclinations toward poetry and profundity, but the
film seems unable to arrive at any particularly enlightening conclusion.
In other words, the film introduces intriguing questions, but does it do
anything worthwhile with them?
What does the title have to do with the story? There is no dialogue
about this phenomenon. In fact, the movie isn’t really about dying at
all, but rather the frustrations, rage, and self-destructive responses
that others have when death destabilizes their lives.
Sean Penn plays a math instructor named Paul Rivers
who is dying of heart disease.
Okay, stop there. That’s the first piece of heavy emotional luggage the
movie will ask us to carry. Rivers’ heart is giving out on him. He has
to have heart surgery; he has to look upon and ponder the flaws of his
old heart; and he has to wait and see if this new heart will “take.”
Add to that the dilemmas perplexing his wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg),
who wants to get pregnant with him before his demise. She asks him to
agree to artificial insemination, and tries to hide from him the fact
that she has in the past had an abortion.
Okay, stop again. Now we have several heavy burdens to carry.
We are also asked to accept the abortion as something that is a tragedy
only because it was kept secret. There is no question at all about the
value of the unborn child’s life, and whether this choice was ethical or
otherwise. There is no question as to whether the little human being had
any rights. There is only angst over the secret being kept.
Rivers is a mathematician, we learn, only because in one scene we see
him carrying a book about mathematics. I suppose we could draw from this
that he is obsessed with subtraction -- he’s gained a heart,
and someone else has lost a heart. He can’t live with that
unevenness, and wants to give something back. He rejects grace. He wants
to seek out the person who gave him his heart. He’s not sure exactly
why, except that he wants to find a way to bless the donor. His idea of
how to “bless” them is, in the end, another example of intense
selfishness, arrogance, and insensitivity.
Penn is well-cast as this angst-burdened sufferer. In recent years, he
has seemed to be obsessed with taking the roles of the most damaged and
frustrated characters around. Dead Man Walking was sheer
brilliance, but since then he has weakened the impact of that role by
taking on similarly haunted figures in The Thin Red Line and
Mystic River, and now this. If he keeps over-acting like this,
his sterling reputation as an actor is bound to nosedive, and he'll
become a self-parody. If he keeps furrowing his brow like that, I fear
that it'll stick that way.
Equaling his performance with her anguish and rage,
Naomi Watts plays Christina Peck, a woman who once wasted her life on
drugs and parties, but who has pulled things together to have a
meaningful life as a wife and mother.
Yep... it's another tidal wave of dysfunction. The movie opens as
Christina is traumatized by the sudden loss of her fragile but
fulfilling existence. When her loving husband (Danny Huston) and
daughters are taken from her, we are asked to re-live her agonizing
moment of realization over and over again in the form of a last message
on the answering machine. As if worried that we will forget the source
of her pain, Iñárritu plays the message again and again, teasing us with
images leading up to the tragedy.
Clea DuVall, who seems to be cast more and more for her ability to cry,
even hysterically (here and in Identity), plays Christina’s
weepy sister.
Having lost what brought her life meaning, Christina goes on to
demonstrate that she did not learn anything from this grace offered to
her. She plunges headlong back into her old habits. Watching Naomi
Watts' performance as this self-destructive character, I realized I'd
seen her do this before: she acted out a similar disintegration in David
Lynch's Mulholland Drive, from beautiful purposeful woman to
self-destructive wretch consumed by baser instincts.
To make matters worse, Christina is soon being stalked by Mr. Rivers.
In yet another story of a broken life repaired, and
then destroyed all over again, Jack Jordan has escaped alcoholism and
become a born again Christian.
Uh-oh. In telling this story, Iñárritu shows that he has observed the
outer details about the way Christian communities work, but utterly
fails to explore any real spiritual questions related to the message or
influence of Jesus Christ in the minds and hearts of believers.
At home, Jack’s Christianity is made manifest in bizarre behavior of
obvious contradiction and commanding authoritarianism. While I believe
there are people who behave like this, in combination with the rest of
the film's exhibitions of extreme and idiotic behavior, Jack's story
becomes just another punch in stomach, just part of a contrived assault
on our emotions.
When tragedy brings Jack to question his faith, he quickly succumbs to
doubts. He’s no Job. He seems to have been taught that the gospel means
our lives will be journeys of peace and stability, that he has the right
to abuse his wife and children, and that he gets the last word in
everything. When things go wrong, Jack quickly becomes angry with God
and holds a grudge. The film clearly aims to convince us that
Christianity is a feeble façade, an emotional crutch that may help
people overcome alcoholism, but fails under any serious testing.
But its assertion that Christianity fails is based on the assumption
that Christian faith, if it is true, will satisfy all of our desires
here and now. This disregards some of the most foundational tenants of
Christian faith... that is a journey of faith, not certainty;
sacrifice, not success. Faith requires us to "carry a cross." Like so
many films that treat religion with condescension, 21 Grams
assumes that human satisfaction is the highest ideal, rather than
humility and an awakening to our place in the grand scheme of things.
And like so many films that fumble the idea of faith, Christ is
carefully kept out of the equation. If the film considered Jesus at all,
we would be reminded that Jesus suffered too, and that the Christian
life is one of self-denial and suffering, not a twelve-step program
leading us to good cheer.
But enough about that....
To avoid saying too much about the plot, suffice it
to say that Rivers soon finds a reason to hunt down Jack with murderous
intent. Oh, and along the way, he and Christina engage in graphic,
drawn-out, desperate lovemaking that is portrayed as some sort of
epiphany, some spiritual revelation. What it is, actually, is the
culmination of their selfishness, their recklessness.
Further, it is here that the director’s inclination to arrest his
audience’s attention shows he is not averse to employing excessive,
explicit nudity. As anyone who has followed my reviews knows, I am not
averse to the use of nudity in film. The human body is, and always has
been, one of the great subjects of art, capable of inspiring us to awe
and reverence. Actors who consent to such work for the greater good of
meaningful art make an honorable decision. But when nudity is used
gratuitously, in a way that does not enhance our understanding, it
becomes merely a distraction and, for some, an indulgence and a
temptation. It takes us to such a private place that it jars us out of
our attention to the story. We are left sitting there thinking, "Wow.
That's Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. What must their spouses think about
this?" Or, if we are weak, the imagery becomes the cheap thrill of
pornography, something that appeals to our shallower, baser, voyeuristic
appetites.
Thus, 21 Grams boils down to a story of three fractured
characters crashing into each other like zombies until they’re all a
bundle of bruises and bitterness. This is peppered with cheap thrills,
to keep us enthralled. Since God, who might offer them strength and
consolation, is quickly rejected as either a lie or a sadistic and
unsympathetic entity, they're left with only their own battle-scarred
hearts as a source of redemption.
In the end, this tangled web of contrivance comes to an implausible
resolution that attempts to offer us some kind of hope. But, ironically,
that comes when the characters take their first steps toward imitating
Christ, as if this is their own brilliant idea, when, in fact, they've
already rejected that very idea as if it was a bad sales pitch.
The problem is not so much Iñárritu, but his Amores Perros
screenwriter, Guillermo Arriaga. Arriaga’s story circles big themes: our
responsibility to loved ones who have passed on; the different ways we
look for redemption; the existence of God and whether or not he is
benevolent; whether or not severe sins can be forgiven.
There are some profoundly affecting sequences. When Penn’s character
lies in his hospital bed after his operation, he holds a jar in his hand
and looks at the offending heart that has just been removed. His
response is unforgettable. His ensuing courtship of a woman with whom he
now feels a mysterious connection is troubling and intriguing at the
same time, just as Billy Bob Thornton’s approach to Holly Hunter was
unnerving and yet hopeful in Ed Solomon’s Levity.
But these moments are few and far between. For the most part, 21
Grams is a hurricane of melodrama and implausibly accelerating
crises that seem orchestrated merely to turn up the intensity. Like Lars
von Trier's Breaking the Waves, it feels calculated, like the
director is not really interested in exploring issues so much as he is
preoccupied with skewering his characters and making them writhe and
squirm. Like Mystic River, the film uses a story of misfortune
and loss to drive its characters into self-absorption, irrational
responses, and murderous intent. It might be a reflection of the
American neuroses — we have the power, and thus when things don’t go our
way, we take matters into our own hands and make them worse. But there
is no reflection on a better way, no real indication that the
director doubts the motives or methods of his characters.
At 125 minutes, 21 Grams feels more like 240. It’s like a mad
mad merry-go-round of emotional traumas that is sure to captivate
viewers with its dizzying intensity even as it throws many of them right
out of involvement in the story.
Jeffrey's Rating:
C-
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