21 GRAMS (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2003) 86 (first viewing: 87; no big deal, just a few tiny things seem outta sync to me now)

Reviewed: September 24th, 2003

[I'd advise only reading -- at most -- the first paragraph {not including the quotes} if you haven't seen 21 Grams.]

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim," said the loudspeaker. "Any questions?"
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: "Why me?"
"That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"
"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why."

21 Grams is the only film I can think of that captures the way "Slaughterhouse-Five"'s Tralfamadorians view 'time' on our planet ("...the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains... it is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever"). Already 21 Grams' shattered chronology has been dismissed by some as arbitrary and at cross purposes with the immediacy usually desired in a melodrama, though I suspect this complaint is rooted in a viewer's inability to appreciate 21 Grams as the taciturn (not explosive) film it so obviously is, full of irreconcilable pain (Jesus doesn't save, he abandons; we can't bring anyone back to life) and pulsing with an often unspoken hurt. Inevitably 21 Grams is a collage of collected moments, speaking potently about just how contained individual sequences in our lives really are; by actively working against conventional narrative ebb and flow, the movie resists histrionics and spectacle at each possible turn. It's the rare film where we are given pounds of information in the first act, where surprise is not a goal. Instead, what the fucked chronology does is enhance the pervading disquietude: one of the film's most devastating scenes occurs prior to a car crash and it's the tragic inevitably of the moment we know is about to occur -- not the grisly horror itself -- that's so heartbreaking. Iñárritu focuses on the clueless gardener instead of the crash because he realizes it's our inability to prevent (since we’re only able to see Time's completed puzzle in hindsight) that lends everyone's role in life a grave helplessness (don't people usually spend the aftermath of a tragedy concentrating on the past, on how things could of been different?). All of which is to say I worry when Jeffrey Wells describes the movie as "a punch to the chest cavity you're not likely to forget or recover from"; I'd say 21 Grams doesn't act as a direct punch, but rather a drug, and Wells's statement sets up false expectations. (Audience expectations are also not helped by Iñárritu's decision to shoot the film grainy and handheld, which I realize many viewers now take as an open invitation for ridicule, automatically dismissing such a 'trendy' device as incapable of discovering the sort of 'truth' it lays claim toward.)

Because 21 Grams traffics in Grand Themes, viewers might think they must search for overarching statements amidst all the fertility of emotion, a (perhaps) pointless task when a movie lives so literally 'in the moment.' If there is a statement at all, 21 Grams is about a kind of cosmic balance (not order-- the difference is crucial), death not a successor to life so much as a precursor: perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in one of the most affecting final shots I've ever seen, fresh snow falling into a dilapidated swimming pool. Likewise, many of the film's most powerful scenes are among its quietest, and since we don't know when exactly they're unfolding (critics seem to overlook that we're not asked to discern a specific timeline), the attention shifts from 'where will this lead' to 'this is something that happened': Watts speaking to the gardener (even though we can't hear what she's saying), Del Toro saying farewell to a casual friend, Penn approaching Watts over lunch (Naomi's work in this film is astonishing: watching her simply go about the subdued business of recovery -- of trying to reconstruct a happy face -- is wrenching; this scene in particular is an almost unbearably sad few minutes, and that's largely because of Watts's alarmingly sweet reticence). Something 21 Grams decidedly isn't, is a movie about revenge: the one character who desires any sort of payback throws the idea out offhandedly (surely unable to follow through with the actions on her own), while the character propositioned to execute the desire ultimately refuses (also note that Del Toro doesn't allow his daughter to seek revenge on his aggressive son, but simply tries to expose the absurdity of the aggression). Iñárritu and company are far more humanistic than retribution allows: in the end, every person in this film pointedly confronts their dilemmas -- and finds a measure of peace -- on their own, isolated just like the very amber they're trapped in. Life does go on (as multiple characters remark), but only in its highly elusive, entropic way.

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