There's a reason that most stories have more or less linear narratives: because though memory is reconstructive and random-access, life as we live it is generally linear. Films that wish to explore the nature of memory and how we remember events - for instance, from the POV of the protagonist - are fine, but films that try to present events as we LIVE them, in a radically non-linear way are always going to be on thin ice.
There is a balancing act. The more work you give an audience to do in terms of wrestling with structure and chronology of events, the less capacity remains to comprehend the characters. That isn't to say every film should be like a soap opera, but if you want an audience to concentrate intently on one element of a film, you will inevitably have to give up their concentration on other elements. For me, '21 Grams' goes just a little too far in this regard, and at the end there is really no pay-off. There is no real reason why these events couldn't have been portrayed in a linear way, other than to impress us with the film's non-linearity. Or, dare I suggest, to cover up the fact that if you actually piece together the plot in a linear way, it turns out to be pretty insubstantial (as well as containing a coincidence so silly, that I was telling my TV "Please tell me that's not going to happen. That would just be too corny.") I wanted to like this film, and I came close. The acting is quite stellar. With every outing Sean Penn continues to persuade me that he is the best English language actor of his generation - or at least I can't think of someone else OTTOMH who would obviously deserve that accolade. And in this movie his performance doesn't even outshine th others. The whole cast is wonderful. But I'm sorry, call me a pleb, but this did seem a somewhat needlessly jumbled film, which ultimately doesn't reward us especially for sitting through two hours of very grim cinema. I wished the writers had backed off a little and given the actors a bit more room to shine without the distraction of trying to work out which timezone they're in at any given moment. To be honest, this kind of thing is just starting to get a little old.
What would the film have been like if it had been a little more conventional in structure? I don't know. As is stands, '21 Grams' impressed me in many ways, but I can't say I really enjoyed it. Perhaps it caught me on a bad day, and I was just after something stupid. No, wait - I watched something really stupid last night; I guess it must be something else. Hmm, this really wasn't a terribly good review, was it? Well, too late now. I had to sit thorugh the movie. This only took you 60 seconds. Maybe I should have written it backwards. Actually, yeah, jumble up the paragraphs. That ought to improve it.
There is a balancing act. The more work you give an audience to do in terms of wrestling with structure and chronology of events, the less capacity remains to comprehend the characters. That isn't to say every film should be like a soap opera, but if you want an audience to concentrate intently on one element of a film, you will inevitably have to give up their concentration on other elements. For me, '21 Grams' goes just a little too far in this regard, and at the end there is really no pay-off. There is no real reason why these events couldn't have been portrayed in a linear way, other than to impress us with the film's non-linearity. Or, dare I suggest, to cover up the fact that if you actually piece together the plot in a linear way, it turns out to be pretty insubstantial (as well as containing a coincidence so silly, that I was telling my TV "Please tell me that's not going to happen. That would just be too corny.") I wanted to like this film, and I came close. The acting is quite stellar. With every outing Sean Penn continues to persuade me that he is the best English language actor of his generation - or at least I can't think of someone else OTTOMH who would obviously deserve that accolade. And in this movie his performance doesn't even outshine th others. The whole cast is wonderful. But I'm sorry, call me a pleb, but this did seem a somewhat needlessly jumbled film, which ultimately doesn't reward us especially for sitting through two hours of very grim cinema. I wished the writers had backed off a little and given the actors a bit more room to shine without the distraction of trying to work out which timezone they're in at any given moment. To be honest, this kind of thing is just starting to get a little old.
What would the film have been like if it had been a little more conventional in structure? I don't know. As is stands, '21 Grams' impressed me in many ways, but I can't say I really enjoyed it. Perhaps it caught me on a bad day, and I was just after something stupid. No, wait - I watched something really stupid last night; I guess it must be something else. Hmm, this really wasn't a terribly good review, was it? Well, too late now. I had to sit thorugh the movie. This only took you 60 seconds. Maybe I should have written it backwards. Actually, yeah, jumble up the paragraphs. That ought to improve it.