Slide Show Of Broken Lives

Fine Ensemble Work Carries Heavy '21 Grams'

By Lisa Kennedy

Denver Post Movie Critic

It is not the easiest film you will take in this holiday season. Far from it. Alejandro González Iñárritu's "21 Grams' is one of the most grueling, gritty films to smack the screen this year.

But it graces the screen as well. That's because mercy and redemption, forgiveness and fury, God and humans are just a few of the modest themes Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga pour into this story of three people who would never have met but for a heartbreaking, spirit-crushing and, yes, life-bestowing traffic accident.

The film opens with a man (Sean Penn) sitting naked on the edge of a bed smoking a cigarette. A woman (Naomi Watts) slumbers in the foreground. The man, we will learn, is Paul Rivers, a mathematician with a bad heart. We'll learn too, that Christina Peck, asleep, was a mother of two sweet little girls and a beloved wife.

It is a hushed scene. And it is difficult not to feel we've barged in on the middle, even the end, of something. In a sense we have. The way Iñárritu has put together "21 Grams' is not unlike a slide show. But the photographs from the lives of Christina and Paul and ex-con Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) have been shuffled like a card deck.

The scenes, often incredibly brief, aren't random, exactly. These three characters are bound to each other before we arrive to bear witness to their struggles.

Although this stylized structure may evoke thoughts of "Memento,' this movie is not a thriller. Nor is it like another movie with a similarly teasing and fluid narrative construction, Iñárritu's exceptional feature-film debut, "Amores Perros.' That movie - nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2000 - also had three stories linked by a terrible car accident.

Tempting as it is to obsess over the order of things in "21 Grams,' it would be a mistake, a sucker's bet. Instead, let the rough and choppy seas of this remarkable film wash over you. There is a greater mystery at work here.

When we first see Jack Jordan - the accidental catalyst of this film - he's talking tough love to a young man who's been in trouble with the law. It's obvious Jack has fallen hard for Jesus. He has the aggressive faith of the newly saved. He sings the hymns a little louder and prouder at his church. His wife, Marianne (Melissa Leo), frets at his increasing zeal.

Jack walks the young man toward the door of the church rec center, looks out and points to a big pickup truck. The word "Faith' is emblazoned on the back. "It was Jesus who wanted me to have that truck,' he tells the hardhead. Jesus probably wanted him to have a hemi under the hood, too. Later at the dinner table with his family, Jack delivers an absurd and brutal lesson in turning the other cheek to his young son and daughter.

Del Toro conveys Jordon's desperate faith and, later, his bitter fall from grace, with simmering intensity.

In his contribution to the movie "September 11,' Iñárritu concluded with this question: "Does God's light guide us or blind us?' It is a question tearing at Jordan's heart.

The performance itself could be the metaphorical equivalent of embossing a big, brash "FAITH' across the soul of this film. But Jack isn't the only pilgrim. There are fellow sojourners, Paul and Christina.

Before the accident, Paul is awaiting an organ transplant. He is a wheezing wreck - a dead man trudging. His wife, Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is brittle and anxious. Although it's unclear if Paul will receive a heart, Mary wants to have his baby. So while he sneaks cigs in the bathroom, she has clandestine meetings with a fertility specialist. This marriage has a worse prognosis than Paul's.

Christina, on the other hand, is the mother of two vivacious girls and wife to a thoughtful husband. Once she had a drug problem, but her life is full of the pleasures of familial love. Christina is as content as Paul and Jack are not. Until the accident.

There is no better ensemble to be found plying difficult emotions on screen this year. Penn's performance is slightly more mannered than his bravura work in "Mystic River.' But he makes Paul's desire to know who he has become since receiving the heart of another man convincing.

Watts threatens to become one of the finest actresses around. This summer's exceedingly slight "Le Divorce' squandered her in a thankless doormat role. But if you need someone to take you from ordinary feelings of happiness or hope to disastrous grief or rage, she's your woman. Watts' depiction of Christina's shattering is the rawest, rarest performance by an actress this year.

Del Toro, Penn and Watts aren't the only ones doing spectacular work here. Leo ("Homicide: Life on the Street') does a Lady Macbeth turn that has nothing to do with glory. Her life's too stark and demanding for that. But her desire to cover up the accident, her despairing, broken attempt to wash down the grille of her husband's truck, is the stuff of great tragedy.

For all Jack Jordan's river of words about Christ and redemption, there is something profoundly secular and existential about "21 Grams.' More than one character here tells another that "life goes on.' It does and it doesn't.

And it is this fact that both saps and strengthens us over the span of our lives.

21 Grams

*** 1/2 (out of 4 stars)

Directed by:Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written by:Guillermo Arriaga

Photography by: Rodrigo Prieto

Starring: Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Clea DuVall

Rated:R for language, sexuality, some violence and drug use

Running time:2 hours, 5 minutes

Distributed by:Focus Features

If you like this, try:"Amores Perros,' "Trois Couleurs: Bleu,' "Mystic River.'

Copyright © 2003 The Denver Post.

This article posted January 11, 2004.