Sunday November 21, 2004

21 Grams

Life doesn't unfold in a straight line.

You can prove this in your own life, I'm sure. To illustrate, here are two non-sequiturish examples from mine.

The first Bonnie Raitt song I ever took notice of was "I Can't Make You Love Me", from her 1991 disc Luck of the Draw. I bought it when it first came out, and then moved backwards in time, listening to the work she'd done in the 70's and 80's -- and then, throughout the 90's, bought each of her newer releases as they came out. I started in the middle, moved backwards, then forwards.

Another example. My grandparents came to this country in the early part of the 20th century, mostly from Eastern Europe. You'd have to go back to Lucy to find even a speck of DNA I share with anybody who'd set foot in North America prior to 1900. And yet I look back to the Civil War and the Revolutionary War as part of my history; I think of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington as two of my presidents; my town, North Andover, founded in 1646, gives me a personal sense of antiquity that dates back over 350 years. And yet I just showed up on the scene some 44 years ago. I popped into the story most of the way through it, and that story, my history -- my perception of everything that has happened prior to this moment -- is woven together from a series of threads that only come together for and in me: my story is not sequential but, literally, random access.

This is how life works. And this is how 21 Grams unfolds, starting in the middle, slipping backwards, surging forwards -- a random access story. And yet, a story that draws you inexorably, irresistably, towards a tragic climax. You see it coming -- in fact, you see scenes from the very end of the movie at the very beginning. But you have to watch the whole thing to be able to put those scenes into context, into a timeline, into a coherent history. It helps to watch it twice or three times; more and more pieces fall into place each time.

Sean Penn is hypnotic as Paul Rivers, a dying mathematician in desperate need of a new heart. Benicio Del Toro is white hot as Jack Jordan, a born-again ex con who, in a perverse trick of predestination, provides him with a donor. And Naomi Watts is unforgettable, heartbreaking and haunting as Christina Peck, once-and-future drug addict, and widow of the aforementioned donor. Three stories, three lives, that seemingly intersect at only one point, a fatal hit-and-run accident, circle each other in ever eroding orbits as Rivers pursues Peck, his new heart calling out to its old mate, and as, together, they seek vengeance and closure and release in killing Jordan.

You can see the end coming like a car crash, unfolding in slow motion. In fact, you have seen it coming, from the first moments of the movie. And yet you can't take your eyes off the fragments of the story as they flash across the screen, pieces of a jigsaw puzzle scattered in front of you, slowly rearranging themselves as you watch. You know what the final picture will look like, and yet your mind struggles, literally, to put the pieces together, to look for any outcome other than the only possible one. It's maddening and magnetic all at the same time. And definitely worth watching.

More than once.

[GET IT]

(2004-11-21 13:46:20.0) Permalink