21 Grams

Rating

Director

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Screenplay

Guillermo Arriaga

Length

124 min.

Starring

Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo

MPAA Rating

R (For language, sexuality, some violence and drug use)

Review

What is the weight of one’s soul? Some say that it weighs precisely 21 Grams , the amount of weight every body loses when it dies. Does everyone have to die to lose their soul?

21 Grams is like a huge jigsaw puzzle whose box has been lost. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu slowly puts the pieces together for the audience and, as the images slowly come together, we find the greater whole we are intended to see. The story jumps around in the present and the past. It’s obvious that the story has already completed but we’re seeing it in a fractured way that forces the audience to remain lost until half way through the film. Without giving anything away, there are three distinct stories that casually blend together as the film progresses and we learn who each of the characters are and why they are so important.

Sean Penn stars as Paul Rivers, a mathematics professor hoping to receive a replacement for his weakening heart. Naomi Watts plays Cristina Peck, a devoted wife and mother of two girls who broke her chemical dependency when she began her family. Benicio Del Toro rounds out the cast as Jack Jordan, an ex-convict and born-again Christian whose faith in God leads him to forego the conventions of social grace.

Each of the characters will, at some point in the maze-like 21 Grams , be brought together by happenstance and coincidence to a conclusion that will involve all of them. Despite seeing snippets from the conclusion, it takes watching a good portion of the film to understand why their stories are so intertwined.

Watts is quite simply phenomenal. She wears pathos like a second skin, allowing the audience to feel every bit of her sorrow and frustration. Hers is the most emotionally powerful of the performances in 21 Grams and is the most likely to earn her an Oscar nomination. Here, Penn, whose best performance to date is still Dead Man Walking , gives his second fine performance of 2003. In Mystic River he plays a similar but far more violent character. Together, his two performances form an unmistakable body of work that should earn him Oscar attention, if voters can decide which performance belongs in the category. Certainly not the best performance in the film, Del Toro has the presence to hold his own opposite the others but, while a suitable performance, it’s one that is easily overshadowed by his fellow cast members.

Editor Stephen Mirrione tries his best to keep the stories together but with Inarritu’s confusing directorial technique. The story is quite dynamic and, while it takes you a lengthy amount of time to put the scenes into the correct order, you can’t help but be impressed by Guillermo Arriaga’s literate and thought provoking screenplay. It takes you on a journey of discovery where the characters’ existences are examined to cast light on the lives of the audience. We learn that the dead may not be the only people whose souls depart after their partings. Those who are left behind are forced to reconcile their actions while exploring new methods to deal with their strife. Here, the characters become completely different people, abhorring what they were and, at times, returning to their old ways. They seek out new lives away from the recent struggles they have faced. In essence, they lose the souls they had, in some cases, only so recently found.

Audiences will find themselves hard pressed to understand the movie without devoting the amount of attention needed (big dumb Hollywood blockbusters don’t help). The performances are such that anyone who does take the time to watch this passionate film will be ultimately rewarded. And anyone who truly finds themselves in this film will understand that the soul may physically weigh only 21 grams (the weight of a stack of five nickels) but it is a far heavier entity than can possibly be fathomed.

Review Written

December 15, 2003