Movie Review: 21 Grams (2003)

A film by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

This is a difficult film to review because it is not a conventional film by any means. There are fantastic acting performances, and layers of detail, but the structure of the film is what presents the challenge. Memento was a movie that had a story that was told out of sequence, but the way Memento was edited worked perfectly because there was a definite method and clear purpose that fit the story being told (the story was told in reverse order). Unlike Memento , I was not able to figure why the scenes in 21 Grams were out of chronological order. This is a powerful film, but it might also be needlessly complex (complexity for complexity s sake).

Here s what we know about the movie (though exactly when we get everything fitted together is a little unclear). Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) is dying. He needs a heart transplant rather badly. Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) is an ex-con trying to turn his life around. He has become a Christian, but still struggles with his anger. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) has lost both her husband and her two children in an auto accident. These three separate lives will start to intertwine as the movie progresses, but to give more than a simple description of who each of these characters are will be to spoil how they interact and why, and what happens to them. The disjointed chronology of the film makes describing it even more difficult because scenes from the beginning of the film only make sense when connected to a scene more than an hour later.

In one sense, watching this film is an exercise in understanding. We see the film play out and we are (or at least I was) working to figure out how everything fits together both as a part of the story as well as to the greater theme of the movie. The movie is titled 21 Grams . It is said that the weight of a human soul is 21 grams because that is, supposedly, how much weight a body loses when a person dies. The film, in my view, is trying to measure a human life, to see what it means to be human, especially in the face of death. On one hand, the film succeeds. On the other, human life and experience is so varied that what may be meaningful for one viewer may be less so for another. I thought this was a powerful, well acted film, but the out of order format of the film was a little distracting. I m not sure about the purpose of setting up the movie with the mixed up chronology. This is a good one, even a very good movie. The acting is great, but I m not sure if the movie is.