|
21 GRAMS Send This Review to a Friend
As the closing night attraction the New York Film Festival chose "21 Grams," the new film by director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who hit it big with their "Amores Perros." which showed at the 2000 festival. Told with shifting back and forth in time, the film is a powerful drama involving a professor who receives a heart transplant from the victim of an auto accident, then later falls in love with the widow, who doesn't know he carries her dead husband's heart. The plot is further complicated by the decision to seek vengeance upon the man who caused the accident, who has been trying to build a new life that extricates him from his problem-wracked past.
Apart from the screenplay and directorial style, what gives the film impact is the collection of top performances by Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. Their work is dynamic and involving and provides a shattering impact as we follow the course of this strange drama of intersecting lives. One might argue that the story could have been told in direct segments from the viewpoint of the various principals, sort of a "Rashomon" approach, but that would deprive it of the intensity achieved by the method used here, which also puts pressure on the audience to do some of the sorting out.
Sean Penn is even better in "21 Grams" than in "Mystic River." He plays Paul Rivers, a professor, and we first meet him lying in a hospital ruminating about death. Naomi Watts as Christina Peck has her life shattered when her husband and two daughters are killed in an auto accident, which comes at a time when she has fought back from drug addiction. Benicio Del Toro, who has an expressive face and a powerful screen presence, portrays Jack Jordan, an ex-convict who has turned his life around by becoming fanatic about his new found belief in religion. He is the one who drives the car responsible for the deaths, and remorse takes over his life despite the fact that his wife (Melissa Leo) urges him to go on and pay attention to his own family.
The major dramatic force is unleashed when Paul, given a new lease on life with a heart transplant, decides to find out where the heart came from, and when he meets Cristina and pursues the urge to do something to help her, he begins to fall for her without her yet knowing about the odd connection.
"21 Grams" is certainly among the year's best and offers the potent combination of terrific acting, storytelling and direction. A Focus Features release.
|