21 Grams (2003)

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu makes his first English-language feature with the downbeat drama 21 Grams. Set in an unnamed U.S. urban center, the film uses a nonlinear structure to piece together the intertwined lives of three very different people. Paul (Sean Penn) is a math teacher with a heart problem and a troubled marriage to British wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Christine (Naomi Watts) is a former drug addict who lives with her husband, Michael (Danny Huston), and her daughters. Jack (Benicio del Toro) is a born-again Christian with a wife (Melissa Leo) who has stood by him since his days as a criminal. Following a tragic accident, the three main characters are thrown into each other's lives. 21 Grams was shown in competition at the 2003 Venice International Film Festival.

Synopsis by Andrea LeVasseur, Allmovie.com

21 Grams unstintingly explores and exposes excruciating pain, raw grief, ruinous vengeance and life-affirming resilience, creating human portraits that are uncommonly exhilarating in their honesty. This is cinematic art in its highest form.

Like Mystic River, its portrayal of grim experiences can be hard to sit through. But, also like Mystic River, its performances are so riveting — and so far superior to most of what we generally see in movies — they make the movie well worth the discomfort.

The two movies share the same star, Sean Penn, whose extraordinary performance in both affirms his status as one of the best actors of his generation. Naomi Watts fulfills the promise she showed in Mulholland Drive and gives the most heart-wrenching performance of any actress so far this year. Filling out the film's starring troika is Benicio Del Toro, who hasn't been this good since his Oscar-winning turn in Traffic. It's only the second film — and the first in English — for Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, whose Amores Perros (2000) also was a triumph.

Presented in a fractured, nonlinear style like Amores Perros, all the parts of the narrative puzzle don't come together until the end. But each piece of the dark tale satisfies as much as the whole. An accident and its reverberations throw together three strangers (Penn, Watts and Del Toro). What springs from this fateful collision covers a continuum of emotion from redemptive love to hateful revenge. Penn plays a college professor in need of a heart transplant. His wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is set on getting pregnant and having his child.

Watts is a suburban wife and mother of two young daughters who overcame a troubled past. Del Toro is an ex-con recently released from prison, where he found God. He is doing his best to hold down a steady job and provide for his wife and two young children.

The mysterious title is not a drug reference. Rather, it refers to the weight that the human body immediately loses at the moment of death. We are told that 21 grams is equivalent to the weight of a hummingbird or five nickels. It also could be the weight of the human soul.

21 Grams creates such a palpably dark atmosphere that one sits through the movie almost cowering in dread for what may come next. Yet one emerges extraordinarily moved by the film's harsh beauty.

Review by Claudia Puig, USA Today

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