Artiste By Scott Kay Settings

21 Grams (21 GRAMS, 2003) Alejandro González Iñárritu

21 grams is the second film by director Alejandro González Iñárritu after that was the magnificent debut Amores perros (2000). The title refers to the weight loss that occurs when a person dies, caused by the escape of the soul from the body. The theory is Dr. Duncan MacDougall, who in the early twentieth century made several experiments with dead people in order to prove that the soul has mass, ergo something tangible and material.

Whether or not, Iñárritu uses this theory as a metaphor to talk about death. The three interlinked stories featuring the film have death as a common bond, namely what unites them is a traffic fatality. The protagonists are tormented with a high sense of guilt, where a necessary causality makes their lives intersect and meet.

The world exposed 21 grams operation itself has no moral to himself, what can be good for a person's life can be tragic for the life of another (for example, the professor played by Sean Penn needs a heart transplant and get it thanks to a terrible accident just destroying the life of the character of Naomi Watts) and, for that matter, people fall victim to guilt and inevitably need a redemption of their sins. " Jesus Christ came not to get rid of pain, but to learn to live with him " he says in a moment of the film the ex-convict played by Benicio del Toro.

Iñárritu knows what he speaks, and the film has a strong metaphysical. The causality of the universe, for better or for worse, is something inexorable in which all parts must fit together, and you always have to accept what we play live stoically. The film is expressed in two theories: first the Christian vision (played by Benicio del Toro, where the causality performed by a God who is pulling the strings), and by another vision we might call philosophical mathematics (represented by Sean Penn, where " every act of life is composed of numbers, they are a door to a greater mystery to understand ourselves, the way in which two strangers get to know ... ). Two visions of the same idea that underlies to merging those lives as if they were single. The film speaks at the bottom of how the lives of each of us form an infinite spiral and are connected to the rest of life around us and how our actions impact on the overall drag.

The film completely lacks a linear structure. The script signed by Guillermo Arriaga is composed as if it were a puzzle, which are slowly fitting the pieces mathematically. The time deconstructs narrative through flashbacks and flashforwards might even shock the viewer, but only apparently. The strength and credibility of the story monopolize our attention so that it is impossible to lose the thread. This structure is more complex than his earlier work, Amores Perros, which was made through clearly stated and defined chapters, which shows a more mature at the time of filmmaking debut by beating it in their own right.

We are facing what is probably the best film of its director to date. A tape will not spare anything in the building of his narrative, I do suffer default his later works, Babel (2006) and especially Biutiful (2010), which are too dilated in footage. Noted by both the good work Arriaga script. But it would be unfair to highlight the merit of an excellent film like 21 Grams highlighting only the script. The staging of Iñárritu manages planes equipped with an unusual realism, using a handheld camera and photography Rodrigo Prieto. To this we must add the drama of the music by Gustavo Santaolalla and the work of some actors in a state of grace, from first to last.

The film hits the mark in describing the world. This is not encouraging, do not inhabit the best of all possible worlds. Maybe just on your end you can see some glimmer of hope. But if life itself is what we are talking about is more than demonstrated that the tandem Arriaga-Iñárritu been fully successful, in addition to giving us an unforgettable lesson in cinema.

EDUARDO MUÑOZ