21 Grams

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21 Grams

Directed by	Alejandro González Iñárritu
Produced by	Alejandro González Iñárritu, Robert Salerno
Written by	Guillermo Arriaga
Starring	Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro
Music by	Gustavo Santaolalla
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release date(s)	September 5, 2003
Running time	124 minutes
Language	English
Budget	~ US$20,000,000
IMDb profile

21 Grams is a 2003 drama written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo and Clea DuVall.

Like Arriaga's and González Iñárritu's previous movie, Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams is a movie which interweaves several plotlines, this time around the consequences of a tragic automobile accident. Penn plays a critically ill academic mathematician, Watts plays a grief stricken mother, and Del Toro plays an ex-convict whose newly discovered Christianity is sorely tested in the aftermath of the accident.

The movie was shot in chronological order, but is edited in a non-linear arrangement where the lives of the characters are depicted before and after the accident. The three main characters each have 'past' 'present' and 'future' story threads, which are shown as non-linear fragments which punctuate elements of the overall story, all imminently coming toward each other and coalescing as the story progresses. Iñárritu may have been influenced by the silent film Intolerance (1916), though his approach is more complex. While some viewers can assemble the story and appreciate the director's motives, many others find the sequencing obstructive and confusing. Positive and negative opinion of the style appears to be highly polarized.

The movie was nominated in the 2003 Academy Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Benicio Del Toro) and Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Naomi Watts).

The title of the movie comes from the work of Dr. Duncan MacDougall, who in the early 1900s sought to measure the weight purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material and measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have had little if any scientific merit, and although MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's mass. [1].

[edit] Plot summary

As previously mentioned, the film is edited in a non-linear manner. The following is a linear, chronological summary of the plot:

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Jack Jordan, played by Benicio Del Toro is a former convict who is using his faith to recover from drug and alcohol addiction. Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) is a mathematics professor with a heart condition who is badgered by his wife to donate his sperm so she can have a baby (presumably after his death). Naomi Watts plays Christina Peck, a woman who is also recovering from a drug addiction with a supportive husband and children. These separate stories become tied together when Jack accidentally runs over Christina's husband and children, killing them. Her husband's heart is donated to Paul Rivers, who recovers but remains weak. Paul tracks down the donor of the heart and falls in love with Christina. Hearing her story, the two then plot to kill Jordan. Paul confronts Jordan and holds him at gunpoint but chooses to spare his life. After Jordan flees, Paul informs Christina of Jordan's "death." However, Jordan, his guilt causing him to be suicidal, follows Paul to his motel room and demands to be shot. Paul shoots himself with the gun in order to distract Christina from killing Jordan, and Jordan and Christina rush him to the hospital. Paul dies at the end of the movie, with the drama between Christina and Jack unresolved. They meet in the waiting room after Paul's death, but do not speak. While Christina is waiting at the hospital for Paul, she learns that she is infact pregnant. The final scene sees her tentatively preparing for the child's birth.