Another big release this weekend (besides the Cat That Will Not Be Named) that's been getting some very positive buzz is Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams with Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. J. Hoberman in the Village Voice has given the movie as resounding a rave as he gives, comparing the elliptical plot to Alain Renais's Last Year at Marienbad rather than Irreversible or Memento. This is exciting news for Cinecultist because though we've heard wonderful things about Iñárritu's first feature Amores Perros (which we haven't seen), and 21 Grams did gangbusters in the acting awards at the Venice Film Festival, the nonlinear editing and some of the images from the production stills did seem sort of ponderous. The above image Entertainment Weekly captioned as "Do I look sad enough in this light?"
But to compare the movie to a classic of this magnitude, Marienbad is one of the Big 20 in the Cannon, implies that the movie is not bad-pretentious it's good-pretentious. Cinecultist likes good-pretentious. We did get a master's in cinema studies after all. Isn't it goofy how a little turn of a phrase in a review can sway our expectations and change our plans for the weekend's viewings?
Posted by karen at November 20, 2003 8:00 AM