21 Grams

[AlguienEstolamiPantalones]

with this title and sean penn and benicio del toro in it, i thought this was gonna be the worlds second reality movie

i can see it now the two of them at the Chateau Marmont at 5 A.M  sweating a lot having a  conversation about doing a charles bukowski film

i wrote this on may 9th and i still think its funny

[Fernando]

Trailer is up at yahoo movies.

[MacGuffin]

An Interview with Director Alejandro González Iñárritu
Source: Latino Review

Alejandro González Iñárritu is blazing a path into modern cinema. His directing style is raw, visceral, and gritty. He is not afraid to use every tool at his disposal to get a reaction. I was a huge fan of his debut film, Amores Perros (Love's A Bitch). He certainly got Hollywood's attention, because movie stars lined up to work with him after its release. His second film, 21 Grams, is another stunning achievement. Reteaming with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who also wrote Amores Perros, Iñárritu has made a startling look at death and life. I had a chance to interview him while in Toronto. He came off as a very friendly, intelligent guy, who relished the opportunity to impact people through film.

Are you totally opposed to making a movie with a straight, linear narrative; or does mixing up the order have more of an impact?

Iñárritu: I would say that this structure, this way to tell the story, was shaped by the story itself. We cannot conceive this story in a chronological order. It would be like three short films crossing at some point. It would not be interesting. I find that one of the compromises or responsibility of a storyteller is to find the best way to tell the story. The most wonderful fables, tales, stories ever written have always hidden the truth and little by little revealed it. It's to get the audience to feel the spaces, lots of information, make them proactive in the experience. Make the audience alive, not passive, boring, dead. I think, I hope this structure allows that.

Do you spend a lot of time in the editing room?

Iñárritu: Let me tell you that I finished shooting the film in March and I'm here presenting it. (Laughs) I stay for the most part editing a film for seven months, just editing, but on this one I was really amazed, in four months I edited the film. We spent three years in a script, editing there. I was really aware. I was editing in the script, even the sounds. I had an interest in that. It's not completely faithful. I've taken like twenty scenes, forty minutes, I'd like to take twenty more (Laughs), but it's very faithful.

What is the scientific basis for 21 Grams?

Iñárritu: I read a novel ten years ago, a French novel that I cannot remember the name and everybody asks this question and I am ashamed I cannot remember. I want to give credit to this author. I don't even remember the name of the novel, but I had also read an article in this magazine discussing it some years later. I was really stunned by it because it was like the metaphor in the novel. Some scientists have discussed that thing, maybe it's 24, or maybe it's water. I had read that scientifically, we lose an amount, a weight very close to 21 grams when we die, anyone, big guys, small guys. Anyone can interpret this meaning. It's just the weight of the ones who leave us, our relatives or our families. They don't go. They stay here and that I feel is the amount of weight that stays with us. It stays here and that's a lot, 21 grams inside weighs a lot. For me it's like breathing, that inhale exhale we are doing represents life. When I have some meditation with this one guy he told me that. You have to concentrate with that. It's precisely life. If you don't get it, the breathing, that's life, if you don't do it you die. That amount of weight in your lungs, that goes in and out, is 21 grams, just to breathe.

I have a question about religion in the movie. What role does it play?

Iñárritu: I think that the problem with guilt is in every religion, especially in the Catholic Church where I was raised, guilt is a universal thing. In my experience, they tell you that have to forgive people, but no one tells you how to forgive yourself; which is the most difficult thing. I was really inspired by an anecdote. A friend of mine, who is a psychoanalyst, told me of a woman that had an abortion and was feeling guilty. The mother and the priest, everybody, said it was the circumstance and blah blah blah. She was in such depression with herself. Finally my friend saw it for what it was and said to her that she killed her son, you're a murderer, you did it, as part of the therapy. She started to cry like crazy, but that's how she got cured. To accept it and confront it. It's not a magical thing but it is a long process. We cannot be addicted to religion, which is another kind of addiction. It's this kind of emotional religion attached to sensorial things. Drugs and alcohol block your emotions, stops it from hurting a lot. Religion is like this.

You have said that sound is more powerful than image, something I've never heard any filmmaker say. Do you spend more time working with the sound than the images?

Iñárritu: I spend a lot of time with sound. I love the clash of sounds. The clash of one sound to the other is as powerful or more powerful than an image. I love how environments sound to each other; it's a musical piece that takes you from one place to another. The ear is more powerful than the eye. I have an extraordinary ear, really. I have an amazing memory in my ears. I'm very bad with my eyes. I don't remember faces or things like that, but my ear can remember a tune I heard when I was four years old. I really have a sensitive ear and I've always loved that.

With your love for sound, how did you end up in film and not music?

Iñárritu: I don't know why. It's a fortunate destiny where I find myself not going into music. I scored for Mexican films, very bad ones. I loved what I was doing, some jingles. I had a band and played drums. I'm a pretty straight musician.

Are you a practicing Catholic?

Iñárritu: In a very particular, personal way. My religion is a social movement, what's the word, hmm, how would you say it...my ethics, my structure! I know how to drive my plane without that structure. I cannot work without that structure. I love to read Oriental philosophers. I really admire them.

Other filmmakers try to shy away from this subject.

Iñárritu: I think that life is a spiritual journey. I cannot conceive life as just biological, chemical coincidence of two little things that were in the water millions of years ago. We are here. I feel that. It's incredible, I don't know, there are some many things. This experience of living is not limited by my senses, my eyes, my ears. I feel there is something beyond that and that is what I believe. Just because I don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So, I believe in interior journeys. That's why I love Jack's [Benicio Del Toro's character] journey. This film is about hope and how we can confront extraordinary losses. Whether we like it or not. Life is a chain of loss. We lose very day. That is the deal when we are born. We lose childhood innocence, our hair, our jobs, our beliefs, our hopes, our health, and then our lives. It's how we deal with that every day. How we can make or give meaning to our lives through hope. I am a true believer in that. We are survivors about that. This is why I work with these actors. Each one of them had this big strong interior life. You could see it inside. A good actor and a great actor have the same skills, but when I put a camera in front of them, you see that life, the traveling inside.

Your last film had some extreme imagery, as does this movie. Is their something about our lives now that led to this?

Iñárritu: I think we have grown up in a global consciousness where we can disappear in one moment or another. Now is real. We are living in a time, where the politicians that are managing the world are working hard to get everything close to disintegration. They are really working hard for this to happen. It seems so; they are working to make our lives science fiction on film. And we are not doing anything. That consciousness of the vulnerability we are living in everyday when I read the newspaper is really scary. I think we are having that feeling to be on the edge.

So you do feel the need to address it and confront it?

Iñárritu: Yes, I feel sometimes mad and frustrated and I don't know what to do. I feel like everyone wants to do something, but we don't know what. I have to do what I can do though my work. To do something not in a vulgar propagandistic way or to play rhetoric demagogic games. I watch and try to find meaning in the characters I express.

[Pubrick]

Mac u forgot one question..

Alejandro González Iñárritu, can you kick all of our asses?

Iñárritu: You betcha.

[moonshiner]

my shitty town, and shitty corporate movie theater will not get this.....i hope nobody breaks down my shitty walls

i'm waiting for the next great film, this could be it

[NEON MERCURY]

my shitty town, and shitty corporate movie theater will not get this.....i hope nobody breaks down my shitty walls

i'm waiting for the next great film, this could be it

..i honesly believe it will ..as soon as i heard of the cast, director, writer, ..it just seems right....

[MacGuffin]

Higher quality Quicktime Trailer:

[Dirk]

Very nice. Like the music too.

[Ghostboy]

You all should e-mail Godardian and ask him to come back here and talk about it, since he's already seen it.

[Gold Trumpet]

I do miss Godardian.

~rougerum

[godardian]

21 Grams is so very powerful. That's all I'm gonna say about it. There might be a few problems, but the performances and the direction completely subsume them.

This item is going to explode when this movie is released.

[MacGuffin]

Larger poster:

[Newtron]

Too much explaining.

Poster notwithstanding, this will rock your world.

[Sleuth]

Yeah, and he's got a sweet ass name too (there's a thread for it if I remember correctly)

Are you somehow related to meatwad?

[modage]