21 Grams

Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, USA, 2003, 124 minutes

Or Amores Perros without the dogs. This, at least, is the initial impression one gets of the new film from Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, again collaborating with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. Again, there are three distinct storylines, and again a car accident provides the axis around which all the human drama revolves. Sean Penn plays Paul Rivers, a college professor in need of a heart transplant. Benicio Del Toro plays Jack Jordan, an ex-con who has found religion, whilst Naomi Watts plays Cristina Peck, an ex-junkie now leading a conventional middle-class existence with two young daughters.

One evening whilst driving home Jack wipes out Cristina’s family in a hit-and-run. Cristina is asked whether her brain-dead husband’s organs can be used for transplantation, thereby giving Paul a replacement heart. Paul soon discovers the whereabouts of Cristina and Jack, who has since decided to give himself up but is also experiencing increasing doubts about a Lord whose divine plan has cast him in the role of child-killer. Paul establishes a tentative relationship with Cristina. Finally, Paul decides they must confront Jack...

21 Grams is a remarkably accomplished and, above all, mature piece of filmmaking. Allusions to other films - Kieslowski’s Blue, Penn’s The Crossing Guard and Claude Chabrol’s The Beast Must Die - never give any sense that it’s all a game of intertextual reference. The three central performances are near perfect, but in the end it is Del Toro who emerges as first among equals; you really believe that his character is going through hell - the scene where Jack drunkenly attacks his religious tattoos with a heated knife a harrowing standout.

Shame they couldn’t have come up with a better title.

Review by Miichel Gentil
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2004