21 Grams

21 Grams

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DVD Reviews of 21 Grams

DVD Review: Taking suffering to a whole new level
Summary: 2 Stars

Looking at all the positive reviews here, I had to raise a voice of dissent. I will do my best to explain why I disagree.

21 Grams succeeds at a few things. The performances are outstanding. I was hurting inside when I saw scenes of Paul (Sean Penn) taking off his oxygen mast to smoke a cigarette, or at the end of the film when his body began to reject his new heart. The scene in which Cristina (Naomi Watts) is told her husband and daughters were run over is devastating and is a show-stopper (compare to Miranda Richardson in "Damage" - it is almost that good). Jack (Benicio Del Torro) is convincing as an ex-con who's fragile world comes crashing down after he kills Christina's family. His drunk, caucasian wife is played by the underrated Melissa Leo, known to most as one of the female detectives in Homicide. And Paul's wife, the talented, bilingual Charlotte Gainsbourg, is effective as the force who is desperately trying to build a family with Paul in spite of his depressed, ill state. Despite the flaws of this screenplay which should have been evident, these actors threw themselves into their roles 110%, and they almost save the film through performances alone.

The movie's bleached, grainy cinematography succeeds in bringing Inarritu's Mexico to the USA. In his first feature, Amores Perros, Inarritu took us to an urban Mexico most of us had never seen before. Here, he succeeds in bringing that world to a nameless southwestern American town. And while we are crossing geographical boundaries, the film is edited in a clever non-linear fashion, in which we see the middle and end of the story within the first opening minutes, and the rest of the pieces are revealed in a scattered manner. An interesting point brought-up by reviewers here at IMDB is that the characters have their on timelines. Namely, Jack lives in the past as he is a haunted ex-con, and Paul is the mathematician who initially wants to survive his illness and father a child and create some sort of future.

All of this is more than enough material for a drama about suffering and death. But it is what this movie does with its foundation is where it fails. To quote from the review by Scott Foundas in the LA Weekly, the theme of this movie seems to be "how much suffering is enough suffering?" Cristina resumes a cocaine addiction after her family dies. Being someone who had `flatlined' before, you would think that she would be afraid of death, but she isn't. Paul is lucky to be alive after he receives a heart from Cristina's late husband, but he doesn't seem concerned about his life before or after the operation. Jack, who ran over Cristina's husband and daughters, feels that God has betrayed him, and is the character who speaks the most truth as he points to his hard and mutters, "hell is in here." In any case, the film set-up a climax in which these three suffering characters collide in a motel room, and at least one will die. That much is revealed in the first 15 minutes of the movie. That final meeting is dependant on an affair between Paul and Cristina, which is not unbelievable in itself, but it is where the film begins to get a little weird.

I don't need a film to explain a character's motives to me, and to its credit, this film does not fully explain why Paul wants to meet the wife of the man whose heart is beating in his chest. But his stalking of Cristina, followed by their getting together, followed by their decision to become vigilantes and kill Jack was difficult to accept. But I stuck with the movie, because I wanted to see how the last pieces of the puzzle would fall into place. I was expecting something very powerful to happen in the final act.

But two plot elements at the very end killed the picture for me. The first was a drugged-up Cristina being told that she is pregnant, as Paul lay dying in an ER. The second was a monologue by Paul just before the credits, which attempts to explain the movie's title. Paul croaks, "How much does love weigh? How much does guilt weigh? How much does life weigh?" At that moment, I wanted to throw objects at the screen. Sad but true.

The film is like a house of cards. It's three characters who are already suffering, and the story only adds to their suffering as we go along. But when we get to the pregnancy and the monologue, I feel the house of cards comes crashing down. It just seemed like it is one layer of drama too many for this film to take on. In shot, 21 Grams is just overweight (pun intended). What was frustrating is that it took me until the final 10 minutes to realize it.

There are far greater films about suffering and death. I recommend "Blue" by Krzysztof Kieslowski (which has two elements borrowed in 21 Grams). Or how about Mike Leigh's Naked, which is a far more enjoyable movie about suffering characters who only add to their grief. I'm sure I could list 50 movies like that. But this film does not belong on the list.

I am confident that Inarratu is going to take us to more new and exciting places, like he did in Amores Perros. He is a talented director and is proof that Mexico is no longer a third world nation. But we shouldn't give him or his writer a free pass on this effort. A movie full of intense performances and clever editing alone is not great art.

Description of 21 Grams