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21
GRAMS
7/10
USA
2003 : Alejando GONZALEZ INARRITU : 124 mins
Big plusses:
performances (esp. Del Toro), cinematography (chilly), editing (ambitious),
music (restrained, plangent guitars), sound editing. But all at service
of a suspect script: overfreighted, and with one or two absurdities that
jar. Melodrama: deaths, transplants, terminal illnesses, pregnancies,
accidental shootings. Opacity of narrative is a problem on first viewing
: not so distracting second time around, when film is much less "blender-edited"
than memory suggests. Inarritu interested in gatherings, people, interactions,
class. Is the story strong enough to support the experimental style and
the hugely serious subject-matter? It's one basic storyline with chops
forward and back in time - does it gain or lose from the editing process?
9/11 subtext: sign outside bar: "God Bless the USA". Indeterminate
city: most nonspecific prominent US production since Fight
Club (it's apparently Memphis). Great moments: the leafblower;
the birds in the sky. Definitely a step forward after Amores
Perros. Nevertheless, major minusses: the pretentious title;
the whole maths/metaphysics baloney (see 1973 Brit horror The Asphyx
for a cheesier but no less plausible analysis of what happens at the
moment of death.) Relentlessly grim and serious: an exercise in misery?
Unrelenting grainy bleakness: 2 hours of grief, death, gloom, depression.
Undeniably (ostentatiously?) heavy going. Occasionally feels like thuddingly
overwrought monotony. But the emotions are real enough (Gainsbourg, Leo,
Murphy, Del Toro, Penn Watts) ... and the camera is always in just
the right place. Mood-music holds it all together. If you can go
along with it.
27th April,
2004
(seen 23rd January : Cineworld, Milton Keynes – CinemaDays
event)
first
seen at San Sebastian Film Festival, 23rd September 2003
– original rating 5/10
by Neil
Young
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