21 Grams vs The Pledge

21 Grams takes a simple, tragic, human story and bends it into a riddle of a movie. Imagine In the Bedroom filmed like Mulholland Drive, and you’ll get the idea. 21 Grams, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, is a jarring, emotional movie, with an exceptional cast and script.

21 Grams has a rather straightforward plot, but the structure is such that certain points are obviously meant to be kept secret, so I’ll do my best not to reveal them here. The three main characters are Christina (Naomi Watts), Paul (Sean Penn), and Jack (Benicio Del Toro). You know from the trailer that two of them are together, or used to be together, or will be together in the future. All three have suffered great losses, either of health, love or dignity (actually, in a sense, they’ve each lost all three of these things), and 21 Grams traces their route back, whether through redemption or revenge. It’s a fascinating, frustrating, ultimately beautiful movie, and I’d recommend it on principle even if it were bad. It’s not.

Although 21 Grams is split evenly among the three main leads, Christina is the de facto main character. She’s a young wife and mother, and seems happy; you get the idea that instead of being blissful in the suburbs, Christina is a little hemmed in, but she manages well enough. She swims laps with her sister (played by professional sister Clea DuVall), and bakes with her kids at home. We don’t get much sense of her marriage, and that might be the point. Christina’s losses in the movie are hers exclusively; I think it’s interesting that she has her own memories and attachments, and not some silly catchphrase or cutesy something to repeat later in regard to her family or husband. A scene of her doing laundry seems simple enough, until we find later what she was washing, and for whom. I’ve only seen Naomi Watts in one other movie—Mulholland Drive—and it’s pretty amazing that this is the same actress. It’s not so much a physical transformation (though it is that, to be sure) as it is a change in tone. Watts speaks and walks differently. At the pool, she laughs at an off-camera joke made by her sister, and it’s one of warmth and recognition. Later, during a lunch with Paul, she laughs, and we get the idea it’s out of the relief that a laugh has sufficed where words might otherwise have been expected.

How and why Christina meets up with Paul (Sean Penn), I’ll not reveal, although I figured it out about a third of the way into 21 Grams. There is a possibility that I was meant to solve this part of the riddle early on; the important part of their friendship is not that they are connected, or how, but the process by which it becomes real. Penn plays a math professor who is terminally ill. He’s married, unhappily, to a woman who is as supportive as a person can be while simultaneously being as resentful as a person can be. She wants to get pregnant, even though it’s potentially impossible for her to do so, and has made arrangements for Paul’s posthumous sperm. Paul has a moment of remission from his disease, and for reasons I can’t tell you, begins seeking out Christina. He watches her swim, and interrupts a lunch. He finally makes official contact on a night that finds Christina out and drowning her troubles in pretty much every substance she can fit into her face. He drives her home, and we figure there are basically two places the scene can go, and then it goes in a third, surprising direction. Paul and Christina’s connection, both before and after they achieve their common goal, is compelling. Penn and Watts have undeniable chemistry; when he leaves his wife in the middle of the night to see Christina, you won’t necessarily approve, but you’ll understand. As Paul, Sean Penn is fantastic. Perhaps the highest praise I can pay to Penn is that Paul seems completely uncomfortable with a gun. It looks out of place in his hand, and he seems fundamentally afraid and unsure of what to do with it, which is not the case in real life, or in most of Penn’s movies.

The third thread of 21 Grams focuses on Jack Johnson, played by Benicio Del Toro. Jack is being sold as a supporting part, but it’s a third of the movie and Del Toro earns it. He’s incredible. Jack is a recent ex-con and born-again Christian. He’s married and has two little kids, and you get the idea that his newfound religion is taking a toll on his family. His wife is alarmed by his discipline tactics and temper. At first I thought she was afraid of him and taking a backseat to his leadership of the household. After a while though, you get the idea that she’s just defeated and fed up. At a party where Jack is expected but hasn’t arrived yet, Christina smokes and drinks, but hides both. Christina is played by Melissa Leo, from TV’s Homicide, and she’s somewhat of a revelation. I love character actors, because the first time you notice them, they’re already fully-formed talents. Leo is an adult, so we don’t think, “wow, that girl from 21 Grams is good. Keep your eye on her, she’s gonna be big.” You just think “Now that’s an actor.” Leo has an amazing scene late in 21 Grams where she…washes a truck…and you realize exactly who leads her family. In a perfect world, the expression on her face when Jack gets out of prison and walks away from her would guarantee Melissa Leo a supporting actor nomination. That probably won’t happen, but we’ve got a new no-nonsense character actress (Patricia Clarkson and Frances McDormand finally have company) and only good can come from that.

By the end of 21 Grams, we see that the puzzle of the movie’s plot isn’t so much a device, like in Memento. It’s not something used to keep the ending just out of our reach, but rather, I think, to allow the characters to develop in a more complicated way. For example, a scene of Christina mixing a cake with her daughters might be followed by a scene of Christina in her underwear in a sleazy motel. We don’t know which is past and which is present, but somehow they inform each other.

For all its value, 21 Grams can be a tough movie to watch. No one is spared from grief or tragedy, and no one comes out in the end without a few scars. It reminded me somewhat of Monster’s Ball, with its characters linked by sadness and coincidence, but mainly I thought of The Pledge.

The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn, tells the story of Jerry Black, a police officer who, despite being on the job for his last day before retirement, goes out on a murder case. He wants to work, and goes out to a farm to speak with the parents of a murdered girl, and makes the title pledge, that he will find the killers, no matter what. What starts out as a typical police thriller (the type usually occupied by Morgan Freeman and a younger Caucasian actor. Why won’t they let Morgan Freeman solve a case by himself?), turns into a revenge movie, and ultimately a character piece of surprising darkness.

On that last case, we get a notion of what kind of cop Jerry has been. He’s all business (wading through a sea of turkeys without complaint), but also sympathetic to the girl’s horrified parents, who want justice (the girl’s mom, by the way, is played by kick-ass character actor Patricia Clarkson).

Soon, the case is solved. A witness has seen a local Native American man, Toby (played by Benicio Del Toro), running away from the murder scene. He’s apprehended and brought in for questioning, which doesn’t go smoothly because the man is mentally disabled and only seems to be repeating parts of the questions, rather than answering them. One of Jerry’s colleagues, played by Aaron Eckhart, coerces a confession out of Toby, but Jerry thinks he’s being led and isn’t understanding the questions. No matter, he confesses, and the case is closed. As he’s being taken away, Toby grabs a gun and kills himself.

Despite everyone else moving on from the case, Jerry continues to work, even beyond his retirement. He becomes obsessed with Ginny, the girl who died, and what happened leading up to the days she was murdered. He buys a gas station half way between where she was killed and where he thinks the killer might be from. There, he begins collecting more evidence, and starts a friendship with Lori (Robin Wright Penn), who has a young daughter. Lori has a tough life, but is a good mother and enjoys Jerry’s company. He feels protective of her and her daughter, and eventually, they start falling in love. Wright is excellent as Lori, and has a look in the movie that is thankfully quite lived in, but not as trashy as characters like this in movies are usually required to be (see Robin Wright Penn in White Oleander for an example of what I mean.)

The Pledge forces us to watch Jerry in a suspicious way. Is he using his new gas station as a trap for the killer? Is he using Lori’s daughter as bait? None of his colleagues believe the case should still be open, and think that Jerry should just enjoy his retirement, and they’re not far off. As Jerry comes closer to solving (or not solving) the murder case, he begins to slip into a kind of madness. He’s completely obsessed with the case and sinks deeper and deeper into paranoia and confusion. I haven’t mentioned that Jerry is played by Jack Nicholson, because in The Pledge, unlike many of his earlier films, being Jack isn’t front and center. Nicholson is amazing. Whether or not he solves his case, or even keeps his sanity, I’ll not reveal; whether or not The Pledge is a mesmerizing movie is without question.

21 Grams: A
The Pledge: B+