21 Grams (2003)

                              21 GRAMS
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: This is an intense (if somewhat melodramatic) story told in a chronologically shuffled order. Sean Penn plays a college professor who receives a heart transplant and feels compelled to become involved with the widow of the donor and the man who accidentally killed the donor. The strange story is made even stranger by the convoluted telling. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4) Warning: My review contains minor plot spoilers. This film makes the viewer work for every plot detail, so any detail of the story is a spoiler.

21 GRAMS is not a film to sit and relax in front of after a hard day. Well, maybe it is if one wants a distraction. In any case, this is not your movie if you want things laid out simply in front of you. 21 GRAMS is a film that would be a fairly extreme drama-- though somewhat macabre--even if it was shown with scenes in chronological order, but director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu shuffled the scenes so he could present the story both as a drama and as a puzzle. By making the film a puzzle the viewer can feel a sense of accomplishment when she or he has put the whole story together and can step back from it and look at it. It is not unlike seeing a Vermeer for the first time in the form of a jigsaw puzzle. Is the strange order a gimmick? Yes, it really is. But it sets this drama apart from many others and makes the viewer strain at paying attention to details. In MEMENTO, the reverse order of the sequences helped us to see what was going on in Leonard Shelby's amnesiac head. It helped us to understand his situation. Here the story is scrambled not to help tell it, but simply to make it an enigma that viewers will have to study and perhaps want to see multiple times.

Following a strong performance in MYSTIC RIVER Sean Penn gives one of his most powerful performances as Paul. As the film begins Paul sits in an intensive care unit looking at the near dead people around him and thinking about how he came to be here. Paul is a professor with heart problems--well people call him "professor" and he has an interest in mathematics. He has received a heart transplant and then becomes obsessed to know about the donor of the heart. His wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg) finds that this disrupts her plans to have a child by Paul. The donor's widow is Christina (Naomi Watts from other popular puzzle films MULHOLLAND DR. and THE RING). This somehow ties into the life of an evangelical Christian, Jack (Benicio Del Toro). Saying more would be going too far.

This ordering of the events of the story may seem haphazard at first, but it is carefully calculated to confuse and surprise the viewer. Theories about what might actually be happening fall by the wayside as the film progresses. I remember thinking that one sequence must have taken place much before another sequence and realized after about half an hour that I had the order reversed. Events seem like ridiculous coincidences until one realizes there is more going on and they are not mere coincidence.

The story of 21 GRAMS allows for some powerful performances, particularly from Naomi Watts as the widow whose life is shattered and who turns to drugs. The shuffled order of the telling is a gimmick, but it is one that works reasonably well and perhaps even works to rivet the viewer's attention. This dark story will have an impact, but perhaps more for the unconventional telling. I rate it 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

                                        Mark R. Leeper
                                        mleeper@optonline.net
                                        Copyright 2003 Mark R. Leeper

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X-RAMR-ID: 36443
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1224896
X-RT-TitleID: 1127008
X-RT-AuthorID: 1309
X-RT-RatingText: 7/10