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| The story focuses on three families that are drawn into a single story built around a heart transplant. The title refers to the weight that supposedly is lost from a body at the point of death. As we see the impact on death on the people involved, we see that that 21 grams can be very weighty -- more so than the weight of a hummingbird that it represents. |
(2003) Film Review by Darrel Manson |
| This page was created on December 3, 2003
This page was last updated on
June 14, 2004
—Review
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film
—Spiritual Connections
—Forum
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| CREDITS |
|  Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Story by Guillermo Arriaga Iñárritu
Screenplay by Guillermo Arriaga Iñárritu
Producers
Alejandro González Iñárritu ... producer
Ted Hope ... producer
Robert Salerno ... producer
Cast - in credits order
Sean Penn ... Paul Rivers
Naomi Watts ... Cristina Peck
Benicio Del Toro ... Jack Jordan
Charlotte Gainsbourg ... Mary Rivers
Melissa Leo ... Marianne Jordan
Clea DuVall ... Claudia
Danny Huston ... Michael
Carly Nahon ... Cathy
Claire Pakis ... Laura
Nick Nichols ... Boy
John Rubinstein ... Gynecologist
Eddie Marsan ... Reverend John
Loyd Keith Salter ... Fat Man
Antef A. Harris ... Basketball Guy
Marc Thomas Musso ... Freddy
Teresa Delgado ... Gina
Original Music by Gustavo Santaolalla
Cinematographers by Rodrigo Prieto
Editors by Stephen Mirrione
MPAA: Rated R for language, sexuality, some violence and drug use.
Runtime: 125 min
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG |
| TRAILERS AND CLIPS |
| —Trailers |
| CD |
BOOK |
21 Grams (Score)
Gustavo Santaolalla, Various Artists
Soundtrack - 2003
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21 Grams
by Guillermo Arriaga (Author)
The fates of three strangers collide when Tony (Benicio Del Toro), an ex-convict and born-again Christian, accidentally kills a man and his two daughters. As Tony struggles to reconcile his fear of jail with a tenuous faith, the widowed Christina (Naomi Watts) descends into a dangerous cycle of grief, rage, and drug abuse. Paul (Sean Penn) is a mathematician slowly dying of heart disease, who after receiving a transplant finds himself healthy but trapped inside a withering marriage.
Book Info |
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| SYNOPSIS |
 21 Grams is the new film from the Academy Award-nominated director of Amores Perros, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. It is a story of hope and humanity, of resilience and survival.
Whether you fear death or not, it comes, and at that moment your body becomes twenty-one grams lighter. Is it a person's soul that constitutes those twenty-one grams? Is that weight carried by those who survive us?
 The lead actors in 21 Grams are three-time Academy Award nominee Sean Penn, Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro, and award-winning actress Naomi Watts.
The actors were all honored at the film's world premiere at the 2003 Venice International Film Festival, where Sean Penn won Best Actor and Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts earned the Audience Awards for Best Actor and Actress.
21 Grams, written by Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros), explores the emotionally and physically charged existences of three people over a period of several months. An accident unexpectedly throws their lives and destinies together, in a story that will take them to the heights of love, the depths of revenge, and the promise of redemption.
 College professor Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) and his wife Mary (Charlotte Gainsbourg) find their union precariously balanced between life and death. He is mortally ill and awaiting a
heart transplant, while she hopes to become pregnant with his child through artificial insemination. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts), having matured since her reckless past, is a beloved older sister to Claudia (Clea DuVall), a good wife to Michael (Danny Huston) and loving mother to two little girls. Her family radiates hope and joy. Much farther down the socioeconomic scale, ex-con Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) and his wife Marianne (Melissa Leo) struggle to provide for their two children
while Jack reaffirms his commitment to religion.
A tragic accident that claims several lives places these couples in each other's orbit. In the aftermath, Paul confronts his own mortality, Cristina takes action to come to terms with her present and perhaps her future, and Jack's faith is put to the test. If spiritual equilibrium is to be regained by any one of them, it could come at great cost to the others. Yet the will to live, and the instinct to reach out to another person
for support, remains ever-present among them all. -- © Focus Features
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Review by DARREL MANSON
Pastor, Artesia Christian Church, Artesia, CA
http://netministries.org/see/churches/ch01198
Darrel has an incredible love and interest in the cinematic arts. His reviews usually include independent and significantly important film. |
 I wanted
to like 21 Grams. (I usually want to like the movies I see, but I had hoped that 21 Grams might be something special.) It has an acclaimed director, an excellent cast, an interesting premise, and an opportunity to think about some serious questions.
Unfortunately, something about it makes you come out to the theater picking at it. It's not that it doesn't have its good points -- wonderful acting from the three primary actors, Penn, Watts and Del Toro, and some exploration of religious and theological issues -- but in the end, it's the problems that you focus on.
The story focuses on three families that are drawn into a single story built around a heart transplant. The title refers to the weight that supposedly is lost from a body at the point of death. (It's not really true, but it's still a nice metaphor for life.) As we see the impact on death on the people involved, we see that that 21 grams can be very weighty -- more so than the weight of a hummingbird that it represents.
 One of the problems with the film is that it is so non-linear. I've liked films that unfold in a non-linear plot, but here it's just plain overdone. It gets to the point that even after you begin to see how the plots intersect, you still
don't have a good idea of what has happened. There are scenes that pop up early on, that really don't add anything to the story later on. Add to that a timeline that you never understand, and don't see how it can take place over a period of years, and it's hard to buy into the story. One of the risks of non-linear story telling is that the story can become muddled. That is a problem here.
Another of the problems is that the characters, well acted that they are, never really invite us to identify with them or care about them. They are just people whose lives we are looking at for a while. We never really understand their motivations. We don't know whether we should hope things to work out for them or not.
Even with the problems, though, the film does offer a chance to consider some important issues. One of those is a crisis of faith for Jack, an ex-con who has been born again. Here is someone who traces all his blessings back to God ("Jesus gave me that truck.") But when things go wrong in his life, that kind of view of God leaves him feeling as if God has betrayed him.
 Another issue is what life is about. One of the phrases that keeps coming up in one form or another is "getting on with life." It is used in different contexts, and we are left to consider what it means to get on with life in various situations. Getting
on with life that makes the philosophical center of the film. What are we to do with life? How are we to go on when all in our life is turned upside down by grief, or grace, or sickness, or betrayal, or rebirth?
The part I appreciate most is the film's look at grace. This is not a warm and fuzzy grace, but a grace that is a struggle and spattered with dirt and mud. Each of the three main characters experience grace in some way, but they don't seem to know what to do with that grace. Grace is hard to deal with. It is a gift that we don't deserve. It is life that is more than we deserve. It is punishment that we deserve (or think we deserve) being
averted. Often living with grace can be harder than living with what we believe we deserve.
As we see the grace that comes into these people's lives, we wonder why they should have such grace. Since we really aren't invited to like them, we may think that the grace is wasted on this bunch. But that is another lesson about grace. Grace is by nature not for those who deserve it or have earned it. Grace is precisely for those who are unworthy of it, but need it for their life to find some sort of salvation.
As the film closes, we get a voice over soliloquy about the body losing those 21 grams and considering all the things that are lost when someone dies. You may have already heard much of it in ads or trailers. It's unfortunate that the marketing of the film gives away what should have been the emotional punch of the film before hand. The consideration of all that makes up life (for which 21 grams is a metaphor) is worthy of consideration.
It's also worthy of a better presentation than this film gives it. |
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