21 Grams
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Movie Reviews of 21 Grams
Movie Review: An intense emotional rollercoaster ride
Summary: 5 Stars
2003 has definitely been Sean Penn's year. He was in two of the best dramas that I had seen on the big screen in years, "Mystic River" and "21 Grams". I recently saw "21 Grams" this weekend. I had been dying to see it because of the critical acclaim over the performances from Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro. At first I wasn't planning on seeing it because I kept seeing the trailer for it in the theatre and Sean Penn's dialogue about losing 21 grams when you die got on my nerves. Needless to say I was eating crow after I just saw the film. Like "Mystic River", "21 Grams" is a very bleak, and devastatingly emotional film. "21 Grams" should have been nominated for best picture instead of "Master and Commander" (overblown epic) or "Seabiscuit" (oversentimental flick) in my opinion.Sean Penn plays a mathematics professor Paul Rivers. He has a heart condition that is slowly killing him. Despite that, he continually smokes like a chimmney. His marriage to Mary (actress Charlotte Gainsbourg) is shaky at best. I thought Charlotte Gainsbourg was quite good as Mary, if not overlooked. It was a quiet yet emotional performance. To Mary, Paul was her achilles' heel while cigarettes were Paul's drug of choice. Naomi Watts puts in an equally devastating performance in this film as Christina Peck, the housewife/recovering addict who loses her family in one day. If Charlie Theron doesn't win the Oscar, then I hope Naomi wins the Oscar for Best Actress. She was absolutely wonderful in the film. The two highlights of the film for me were the performances by Benecio Del Toro as Jack Jordan and former "Homicide" actress Melissa Leo. Those two actors made the film for me. Jack was such an interesting character. He was an ex-con who turned to Jesus yet continually found himself returning to his violent ways. Melissa played Jack's long-suffering wife. Her performance was just as good as Naomi Watts. As much as she loved her husband, she was tired of the constant torture he inflicts on himself especially the guilt of the act of committing vehicular homicide. A friend of mine said she didn't want to see this film because it was a drug movie. Although there are drugs in the film, they are not the centerpiece of the film. Love, redemption, and forgiveness is what "21 Grams" is about. Granted it is bleak and depressing but in the end what it boils down to is love, redemption, and forgiveness. My only flaw with the film was the way it was edited. It took me a few minutes to realize that the film was edited to show what lead up to each scene. It was a bit confusing but I guess it made the film more interesting. Nevertheless, "21 Grams" is evidence that human emotions makes for good drama.
Movie Review: Compelling rationale for time shifting
Summary: 5 Stars
As he did in his first film released stateside, Amores Perros, Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu here uses time shifting to tremendously enhance the emotional resonance of his story. And again, he uses a single critical event--also a car accident, as was the case in Amores Perros--to converge the signficantly different lives and lifestyles of his disparate characters. A working class ex-con turned born-again Christian (Benecio del Toro), an intelligent college professor with a major streak of irresponsibility (Sean Penn), and a woman whose stability completely hinges on her family (Naomi Watts) comprise the fated triad of characters whose involvements with each other build in momentum with tragic consequences.Inarritu does not, as several critics have said, use flashbacks and -forwards in a "flashy" way, attempting to prove how hip a filmmaker he is. He is a brilliant director who understands, more than most directors working today, what cinema really is as a medium and how best to use it to convey what no other medium can. Taking his cue from veteran Robert Altman, Inarritu shows us his characters at various stages of their lives, one sequence after another, to communicate the consequences of their choices, and of the accidents that life is too often made up of.
That our actions are too often the result of those accidents over which we have little or no control is what makes this film a tragic drama and what brings us as viewers to a fever pitch of emotionality as the story unfolds. One might think that the frequent jump-cutting and time shifting could make for a jerky experience, but this is not the case. We see the characters unfold before us as the film progresses; we understand more and more of why and how each of the characters--and by extension, each of us--influences the other; we feel the real meaning of our lives as we live them, based on how the characters' lives are lived in the film.
What we come to know in this film is, at the risk of sounding cliched, how the short mortality of our lives is too often ignored at the expense of what lies immediately in front of our noses. The actors in the major roles are highly talented interpreters of dialogue that cries out for rich, emotionally resonant work, and they have given it to us with tremendous skill. So too have the supporting cast, especially Melissa Leo as the wife of the ex-con and Charlotte Gainsbourg as the professor's wife.
This is not a film that revels in gimmickry and superficial ostentation. It is one whose director has thought deeply about how we feel, how we respond, how we think, and how we act. It is a film that should be seen, and it is one of the best films of 2003.
Movie Review: LIke Assembling a Jigsaw Puzzle
Summary: 5 Stars
Imagine dumping a jigsaw puzzle out on a table, without the box top to show you what the final picture is. You "randomly" pick up the pieces and slowly an image begins to form. This is 21 GRAMS, a story told in non-linear fashion, opening with brief cuts from the beginning, middle, and end. Slowly, patterns emerge, and a unifying vision of the story manifests.This is a movie about life, death, love, fate, destiny, randomness, and ultimately becomes an exercise in theodicy. Don't be distracted by Sean Penn and Naomi Watts' excellent performance (one of Penn's best ever). This is Benicio del Toro's story. All the main characters struggle to find meaning in life and tragedy, but assembling del Toro's story gives the strongest answer.
We find an interesting resonance between del Toro's evangelical faith in a God who controls every aspect of life and Penn's mathematical determinism-fractals, chaotic, but deterministic. Repeatedly, we see characters surrender their "free will" to the forces they believe determine their lives. We listen to the question "Why?" and come up empty throughout the movie. In the end, we, the viewers, must find our own "Why."
The move suffers some from the mode of story telling. The violently cut, fast-paced opening third of the movie gives way to longer pieces of linear narration. These linear scenes load the movie, slowing it down to real-time, almost sequential action. After the rapid chaos of the beginning, this seems tedious and self-indulgent. But here lies the paradox: without this deceleration, we may never have been able to decipher the story! It serves as a necessary Rosetta stone.
In the end, it's a solid five-star flick. It boldly tackles deep issues and doesn't hand out trite, pre-packaged answers. It is, if you will, an un-morality play. The viewers are not told what to believe, but are left to wrestle with meaning as the credits roll.
The performances are nothing short of spectacular. Sean, Benicio, and Naomi shine through their parts. These are not two-dimensional Hollywood golems enacting a simple story, they are complex characters reflecting the chaotic web of human personality.
It should have swept the Oscars. The haunting score, the superior acting, the impeccable direction, the brutally human script, and unrivaled production set this movie head-and-shoulders above all comers. Unless you think "Judge Judy" and "Survivor X" are the best entertainment to come down the pike, don't miss this one!
(If you'd like to discuss this movie in more detail, drop me an email from the "about me" link above. Thanks!)
Movie Review: WOW!
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first started watching 21 Grams, I thought, just as you're supposed to, what the HELL is going on. For 21 minutes, 21 Grams made absolutely no sense. It was a convoluted mess of various scenes mostly revolving around three seemingly unconnected characters, Paul Rivers (Sean Penn), a terminally ill college professor, Christina Peck (Naomi Watts), a mother, housewife and recovering addict and Jack Jordan (Benecio Del Toro), a born again Christian with a past. But right from the beginning, during the intro, when you get a flash of Rivers and Watts together in bed, you know their paths will cross. In fact that was one of the confusing things, they weren't yet an item. This film was shot in chronological order with hand held cameras only and then edited totally out of sequence. In the second 21 minutes, you get a vague idea of what's going on. Rivers/Penn is vacillating between healthy and extremely fragile, Watts/Peck is swimming at her swim club one minute and in despair the next and Jordan/Del Toro is going from Proselytizing to jail. It's still confusing as hell but at least you're finally able to figure out that some scenes are in the future and some in the past.
In the third 21 minutes, tragedy befalls Peck and Jordan in the form of an auto accident, a tragedy which indirectly benefits Rivers, who receives the heart of a grieving Peck's husband. Rivers is intrigued if not greatful and wants to know more about his beneficiary, so he hires a detective.
In the fourth 21 minutes, although it's still jumbled, the story finally starts to come together. Rivers boots his girlfriend and manages to meet and gain Peck's trust. A rattled, guilt ridden Jordan gets released from jail and leaves his family and rejects his faith. Jack Jordan is a lost soul.
Of course the remaining 42 minutes of the story is for you to find out.
Conclusion
Even with the unconventional method of story telling in the film, it conveyed the emotion, no it tranferred the emotion to me. This is a story of anguish, of hopelessness. Though it is probably fiction, it brings tears to my eyes as I write about it, as I can empathize with the characters. I can't say enough about the performances of Watts and Del Toro. The movie just oozed with Christina Peck's Pain and Jack Jordan's overwhelming guilt. Sean Penn's part, while not as emotional was equally well delivered.
Final rating 4.5 stars
Oh, one other note. What's with the title 21 Grams? It's proposed to be the weight of the human soul!
Movie Review: "The earth turned to bring us closer. It turned on itself and in us, until it finally brought us together in this dream."
Summary: 5 Stars
"21 Grams" is the sort of movie which sucks the life out of you--I don't think there is one agony in the human conditioned left unturned, one painful rock left uncovered, one intimation of the fragility of human existence left without inspection in this movie. Then, like the natural cycles of life, the sun shines meekly when the night gets darkest.
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu provides with a scathing glimpse into the lives of three people for whom life has indeed become little else, particularly for Sean Penn's character Paul, a cynical mathematics professor for whom life has become little more than a long convalescence: the victim of a fatal heart condition, he is slowly dying but shows rather negative signs of vitality. He refuses to stop smoking and recognizes that his wife, played unlikably well by Charlotte Gainsbourg, has never been the one for him. She badgers him for a sample of his sperm with the process of artificial insemination and it does not seem to the viewer that it is out of any concern for him or a desire to "continue" his existence in some way: it is for her own satisfaction and hope for a new life. Rather than taking the safe route, he elects to die outside the hospital than taking the advice of his doctor and dying in the hospital.
Christina (Naomi Watts) is a woman with a husband and three children and a recovering cocaine addict. Her life has become more stable as her attention is directed towards the welfare of her family. A car crash involving Jack, an ex-con turned Christian, turns all of their lives around forever. This film is completely non linear, but unlike "Memento" or "Mulholland Drive" it does not take multiple viewings to show what is happening. If you really concentrate you'll understand.
Neither of the aforementioned actors--Penn, Del Toro, or Watts--have transcended the work they did in this film. The acting is fantastic, and I have to disagree with some viewers' about it being "hopeless": the subtext about Penn and his warning shot at the end, which brings everything together, is what brings salvation. It is gritty and true to real life, almost uncomfortably so--you'd think you were watching a documentary with amazingly sincere people at times--but it is no way hopeless.
This ranks among one of the best films I've seen to emerge in this decade. Highly recommended!