“It was kind of a no brainer when I came to this cubby on the movie shelf that I should blog one of the two Iñárritu movies I haven’t written up yet. If I have to explain why he’s significant you haven’t been paying attention to movies for the past two years. I was kind of excited to revisit this, vowing to pay more attention that I had when I first bought the DVD.
The story follows three characters, played by Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro, and how they’re intertwined in life and death. What’s confusing is that we’re constantly jumping across timelines. I had a really hard time keeping them straight, especially since I made some false assumptions about the clues. By which I mean, healthy looking Sean Penn actually comes after sickly Sean Penn, which is counter-intuitive, and threw a lot of stuff off.
While it was filmed in chrono order, I don’t necessarily know that watching it that way would have made things better. I think the story was far more effective and engaging (and powerful even) jumbled up. It’s just the sort of thing that I think I’d need to rewatch yet again in order to fully appreciate it all. Not that a rewatch would be such a bad thing. The cast is at their top of their game and again the story being told is a great one.
Now I’ve just gotta get my hands on a copy of Babel (which I saw a long time ago, pre-ExpDel) and my Iñárritu feature post collection will be complete!”