21 Grams

Films aren’t novels, even if they have been made from novels. Each form has its strengths and weaknesses, and particularly in movies, the way is story is told can be as important to me as the story itself. In fact, a different way of telling can rescue what might have been a routine story, if told routinely. Good examples: Forget Paris, which I loved, was unfolded as a series of episodes related in a bar to someone who knew none of the principals. Memento and the musical Merrily We Roll Along began at the end and worked back to the beginning, the first because the main character had anterograde amnesia, the second because Stephen Sondheim just wanted to have fun. 21 Grams is told in fractured time. You see scenes to come, scenes that have already happened, in no particular order, and you have to put it together yourself until the end arrives, not with a surprise, but with some satisfaction, at least on my part. I can see how it would be annoying, though, especially when you put it all together at the end and realize there was really nothing special about the story itself. But then, that’s the point, isn’t it?