In Reply to: 21 Grams posted by Bulkington on April 19, 2004 at 07:29:02:
The way the story is told, the viewer is forced to participate in unweaving it, thus becoming much more involved than what he would if it was told in a lineal way.Have you ever seen a good hypnotist at work? If you ever have, then you shall have noticed how what he says is not so important as how he says it -voice intonation, gestures...- and how by doing it that way he is able to put the subject under a deep trance, making him become so involved with the story he´s weaving for him that he loses any touch with what is happening around him: he is living an altered state of conscience and, when at it, suggestions made by the hypnotist go straight to the deepest of his mind, without being filtered by his rational brain...
I have seen a woman in a surgical room having her nose broken by the surgeon who was performing facial surgery on her, and she had been given no anesthetics, just hypnosis: I saw her blood pouring from her nose, while she smiled and swallowed that part of it which went back to her throat, tasting it as the cold Coca-Cola the hypnotist was telling her it was... and, once that surgery was done, she simply stood up and left the surgical room walking on her own feet, never feeling any pain.
Under our usual state of consciousness, things seem to happen under a lineal way, and that´s the way we usually remember them. But life is much more than a state of consciousness, and things don´t happen to us in the orderly way we think: what the authors -writer and director- have done when telling this whole story the way the have chosen to is telling us, and forcing us to accept, that life itself only gains a sense at the very end of it; and those two or three minutes at the end of the film, when an ailing Sean Penn is voicing his naked reflections about the meaning and sense of life -his or any other´s- are crucial to give the whole story its full meaning: 21 grams, that´s what can be seen from outside, no more..., and so much for he who sees it with one foot on the other side!
Maybe you haven´t liked the way that story was told. But I am sure that you have come back to it no few times since the moment the lights were turned on at the theatre..., as I did.
That´s how I see it. And I agree: everybody in it played as if their own life was in it. A truly exceptional film, one not to be forgotten.
Those were my 2 cents
Regards
BF
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Follow Ups
- It is masterly told, for good reasons: - orejones 09:24:47 04/19/04 (10)
- Re: It is masterly told, for good reasons: - Bulkington 09:51:57 04/19/04 (9)
- "I just can't shake this feeling like a needless or cynical trick." - rhizomatic 10:17:41 04/19/04 (8)
- "And Ulysses couldn've 'just' been about a day in Dublin..." - Bulkington 11:15:00 04/19/04 (7)
- Rendering a tin man a straw man - rhizomatic 12:03:35 04/19/04 (6)
- Re: Rendering a tin man a straw man - Bulkington 13:17:16 04/19/04 (5)
- Well, well, SCREW YOU THEN! - rhizomatic 13:25:35 04/19/04 (4)
- Man, take that shit OUTSIDE - Bulkington 13:31:21 04/19/04 (3)
- Hey, back off the Rhizman...he's only fooling...I think. One never knows about commies. (nt - dennzio 16:26:57 04/19/04 (2)
- Yep. But Bulkington is going to see the film at least once more! - orejones 08:22:54 04/20/04 (1)
- Give me time! - Bulkington 09:32:18 04/21/04 (0)