21 Grams Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)October 17th, 2003
21 GRAMS
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A man (Sean Penn, "Mystic River") quietly smokes and regards his lover's (Naomi Watts, "The Ring") bare back. Heavily tattooed ex-con Jack (Benicio Del Toro, "The Hunted") tries to get through to a rebellious kid at a Catholic center. Scenes like scattered shards of glass slowly come together as three unlikely people are linked by a car accident that took three lives in "21 Grams."
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu and his screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga Jordan repeat the "Amores Perros" outline of a car accident linking three different stories, but in "21 Grams" those stories converge as its trinity share enough body and blood for a half dozen Catholic Masses.
Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg, "My Wife Is an Actress") implores a fertility doctor to help her get pregnant by her husband Paul (Penn), a professor with one month to live. As in "The Hours," two women prepare for parties that will derail with one tragedy. Christina (Watts) receives a call and rushes to the hospital to learn she's lost her husband and two daughters while an excited Mary wakes up Paul for the heart transplant that will save his life. Jack, his faith in God delivered a fatal blow, tells wife Marianne (Melissa Leo, "The 24 Hour Woman") that he hit a man and two kids. As his birthday party proceeds inside, Marianne tearfully washes his truck of blood even as Jack decides he must turn himself in.
Paul makes the painful decision that his marriage is over and begins to watch over Christina, having illicitly obtained his donor information. Christina is falling into an old pattern of booze and drugs, but she responds to Paul and a tentative romance begins. When Paul tells her about his heart transplant (shades of "Return to Me," albeit not exactly romantic and decidedly not comedic), Christina becomes enraged and focuses her anger on the crime's perpetrator, Jack. Paul agrees to help Christina track down Jack, who has left his family for a solitary life working in a remote area.
Arriaga wrote "21 Grams" (which refers to the amount of body weight a person loses at the time of death) in the pixilated sequence presented on screen. The seemingly random flashes of three non-sequential stories give the film an air of mystery and give the characters added depth when we're forced to seek motivations for actions presented before their history is revealed. The fatal accident is deftly handled. Christina's husband Michael (Danny Huston, "Timecode") leaves her a message from his cell phone just before warning daughters Laura and Katie to stay close. We see Christina replay this his last words repeatedly. Then we see the scene play out. Michael nods to a man blowing leaves and the camera stays on this man, the leaf blower almost obscuring the sound of Jack's truck hitting the family off screen. The film becomes problematic, though, with Christina's vengeance, for an overwrought and sordid (probably meant as a representation of hell on the way to redemption) 'third act.' When Christina is asked by her sister Claudia (Clea DuVall, "Identity") if she will attend the trial, she asks what is the use if her family will still be dead. It is difficult to believe that this upper middle class soccer mom would descend into an existence of drugs snorted in club bathrooms and liquor drunk from paper-bagged pints (prior behavior is barely alluded to). Her sudden blood lust and Paul's actions leading up to the film's denouement take on an air of hysteria. Still Arriaga and Iñárritu startle with an unexpected maneuver allowing Paul to save Christina in a way that neatly dovetails into the film's themes.
The three actors cannot be faulted and should all be remembered at award time. Penn is utterly believable as a man minutes from death, even if his vocation as a math professor seems arbitrary. Health returned, his tenderness towards Christina is very real. Watts is grief personified, struggling to life with Paul even as she pummels her rage against him. Best is Del Toro, the ex-con who finds redemption more grueling when the faith he denies forces him to do the right thing.
Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto ("Amores Perros") retains the gritty, desaturated look which is on the verge of becoming a cliche. Still, the style serves the fragmented nature of the story well, fed to us like old memories. One shot, of black bird silhouettes rising up against a red, white and blue sky is particularly memorable.
"21 Grams" is an emotionally wrenching, downer of a film, but it achieves a ray of hope as the tiny weight that leaves one of its characters finds rest in another.
B+
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