Ray Pride

Watching "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," it's easy to be swept up by the fury and force of Alejandro González Iñárritu's direction. The visceral momentum of his talent is almost arrogant.

Working again with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (who later shot "8 Mile" and "25th Hour") and screenwriter Guillermo Arriago, the Mexican-born director's second feature is literally timeless, shifting from scene to scene through past and present. As in "Amores Perros," a terrible car accident twines several lives together. In an American every-city--actually Memphis--a truck driven by an alcoholic who's turned to Jesus (Benicio del Toro, furiously fretful) kills a man and a child, leaving behind a fragile widow (Naomi Watts, brilliant) who returns to drugs, and a dying mathematics teacher (Sean Penn) whose life is saved by the dead man's heart. Passions flare. Revenge is in the offing. Beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order: González Iñárritu takes melodramatic, hyperemotional material and shuffles it like a bad dream.

"I would say that this structure, this way to tell a story, is suggested by the story itself," the 40-year-old filmmaker says. "We could not relate this story in a chronological order. It would be like three short films, just crossing at some point, but it would not be interesting. I find that one of the responsibilities of the storyteller is to find the best way to tell the story. The most wonderful of fables have always heightened the truth. To get the audience to feel those spaces [in the] information and make the audience alive, not passive, boring, dead," he says, his rich Spanish accent as intense as his eyes and wild head of dark hair.

Is this a knack of editing or writing, I wonder? "Let me tell you that I finished shooting the film in March and here I am with the film [in early September at the Toronto International Film Festival]. With `Amores Perros,' I edited the film in seven months. This one? I was really amazed that I finished in almost four months. Why? We spent three years with the script, editing. I was editing in the script, even the sounds. It's not completely faithful. I took out about twenty scenes, about forty minutes, and I would love to take out twenty more [scenes]."

"21 Grams" may have the most intense sound design of the year. "I spend a lot of time on sound. I love the clash of sounds. Not only the clash of images. It's more suggestive than an image." He demonstrates transitions from the film, making sounds with his mouth, a car engine, water rushing, a plane screaming. "It's a musical thing. The ear is more powerful than the eye. I have an extraordinary ear!" he says, laughing. "I have an amazing memory in my ears. Strange thing. I am very bad with my eyes, I don't remember a lot of faces, but my ear can remember a tune I heard when I was four years old."

Is it guilt that destroys the characters, particularly del Toro's? "The problem with guilt is, at least in the Catholic Church where I was raised, you are told that you have to forgive. But no one tells you how to forgive yourself! Which is the most difficult thing. That's what's the burden of [del Toro]. It's like the Book of Job. He's got this big enemy, called God, which is impossible to escape because it lives in your perception. He cannot forgive himself [for the pain]."

Iñárritu Gonzalez gets more intense as he recalls a story a psychoanalyst friend told him about a patient who felt guilty after an abortion. "Her mother and the priest say, 'No, no it was the circumstances.'" She was depressed enough to try to kill herself twice. "Finally, my friend saw her and he said to her, `You know, yeah. You killed your son. You're a killer. You're a murderer. And you did it.' She started to cry. That's how she was cured. Just to accept that. To confront that."

How does that suit del Toro's character? "It's not a magical thing. It's just a long process trying to recover. To not be a victim to religion, which is another kind of addiction, sensorial attachments. It colors his emotions. That is what drugs and alcohol do, block your emotions."

The title, at first, makes the film sound like it'll be a thriller about drugs. "I read it in a novel ten years ago, a French novel I don't remember, I've been trying to remember, and I'm ashamed!" he says. "I want to give credit to the author, but I don't remember. Anyone, big guys, little guys, when we die, lose twenty-one grams. Anyone of us can make [our own] meaning."

But for you? "It's just the weight. The ones who leave us? They don't go. They stay here. That's the amount of weight that I feel stays with us. Then, those twenty-one grams inside of us? That's a lot. It could be the inhale-exhale we are doing now." He reaches out, demonstrates deep breathing. "That represents life. When I did some meditation, the guy told me you have to concentrate on that, that breath, that is precisely life. If you don't get that... That's life, that's literal--if we don't do that? We die."

"21 Grams" is now playing.

(2003-12-02)

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