A director who likes to play with structure

A car accident and the subsequent heart transplant connected the three families, but the narrative is not linear at all. In the case of multiple clues, while different characters and clues are interspersed with each other, some story lines are flashing back, and some story lines are flashing back. Before the flash, it was like a shuffled playing card. Only after watching the whole film can the whole story be connected. After the spades, clubs and diamonds were put in their respective positions, it was discovered that this was a good hand.

After watching the three works of the Mexican director, "Love is Dog Food", "Tower of Babel" and this one "21 Grams", they are all films with very distinctive structure. Love is dog food and a plate-like structure. Three related but independent stories about dogs. The Tower of Babel has multiple clues. Because of a shooting outside the country, four groups of people from four countries of the United States, Japan, Morocco, and Mexico are linked together. This "21 Grams" is even more complicated.

The three families have similarities, the husband and wife, innocent and lovely children (one of them is trying to have children), an accidental incident shocks them to their respective destiny, the story is very exciting, women tend to want family integrity, men are pursuing Responsibility and forgiveness, it is said that the weight of a person will decrease by 21 grams after death, because the soul has left, which is the origin of the title of the film.

The complex structure allows the audience to have another kind of fun when watching the movie. Like a puzzle, each image is placed in its place according to the time line, so as to obtain intellectual pleasure; When the audience's attention is focused on the context of the picture, they may not notice that Sean Penn's wife suddenly decides to leave, which seems unconvincing, and who helped her husband clean the car after he killed him. Why does the blood-stained wife have to endure her husband, this 16-year-old scum who started all kinds of crimes, what is her motive for accompanying him all the time?

The director uses a lot of camera shake to create a sense of real life. When the other shots of the small scene move continuously, the rhythm is accelerated, and the visual style is exactly the same as his other two films, so when the protagonist is in the blurred focus Crying behind the foreground, as well as the escalation at the end, the contrast brings a strong impact. The 720p picture quality I watched still had a rough texture, which should be the effect the director deliberately pursued. Life itself is not delicate enough. When the soul leaves, "life has to go on, with or without God".

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