Anne van der Pasch | 3462668
BA eindwerkstuk | James Hurley
Genre Theory | 5738 words
Style and Narrative in the social study of
Alejandro González Iñárritu
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Style and Narrative in the social study of Alejandro González Iñárritu
Anne van der Pasch | 3462668
Bachelor eindwerkstuk | James Hurley
Inhoudsopgave
Style and Narrative in the social study of Alejandro González Iñárritu .................................... 3
Genre and drama .................................................................................................................... 5
Alejandro González Iñárritu: “That’s when you get trapped in your own style and you die”8
Amores Perros ...................................................................................................................... 10
21 grams ............................................................................................................................... 11
Babel ..................................................................................................................................... 13
Three films in comparison: prototypical events and their filmic realizations ...................... 15
Conclusion: “The genre film reaffirms what the audience believes both on individual and
on communal levels” ............................................................................................................ 17
Literature .................................................................................................................................. 19
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Style and Narrative in the social study of Alejandro González Iñárritu
Sometimes you find that a film is looked at solely for its content, without any recourse
to the style or manner in which the story is told, and after all this basically is the art of the
cinema.1
Rick Warner discusses Godard’s words on ‘Hitchcock’s Method’ and discerns a controversial
claim between the two filmmakers. Godard claims that after having seen the film it is not the
content, but certain images which stay in our mind.2 Hitchcock states that the audience does
not notice the workings of montage “due to the speed of succession and narrative absorption”3
while watching a film. Warner writes that the sublime effects on Hitchcock’s films do depend
on its montage; its regulated rhythms, and the particular organization of stimuli. With these
effects, Hitchcock’s films gain a ‘hypnotic power’ for its spectators. Godard needs us to
notice the binding forces and structures in films: it is the material’s intensity which counts for
the spectator.4 Godard argues “Image first”5, with which Valentijn Visch and Ed Tan agree in
“Narrative versus style” (2008). They state that it is the filmic realization – thus the image –
which is directly perceived by the viewer, while events need time to unfold and therefore need
time to be recognized by the viewer.6
Rick Altman writes in Film/Genre (1999) that critics choose one kind of generic
analysis in preference to the other: genre is located in either semantics or syntax.7 Altman has
an alternative: the ‘semantic/syntactic approach’.8 Semantic elements could be common
topics, shared plots or key scenes, and includes character types, familiar objects and
recognizable shots and sounds. The syntactic aspects contain plot structure, character
relationships or images and sound montage; the presentation of the narrative.9
Rick Warner. “Difficult work in a popular medium: Godard on ‘Hitchcocks’method’,” Critical Quarterly
51:3 (2009): 68.
2 Ibidem.
3 Ibidem.
4 Idem: 69.
5 Idem: 68.
6 Valentijn Visch, Ed Tan. “Narrative versus style: Effect of genre-typical events versus genre-typical filmic
realizations on film viewers' genre recognition” Poetics 36:4 (2008): 304.
7 Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 90.
8 Idem: 89.
9 Ibidem.
1
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Anne van der Pasch | 3462668
Bachelor eindwerkstuk | James Hurley
As Visch and Tan research usefulness of events and filmic realizations for
categorizing genre,10 I would like to research how one director can experiment with these
characterizations of the medium film. Godard analyses Hitchcock’s’ films for their events, not
per se the events as a whole, but how one scene is constructed.11 What I would like to
research is if and how a director can experiment with similar narratives, while presenting
them with very different editing styles. How can three films with similar narratives but
different filmic realizations all be seen as drama films, while there apparently are filmic
realizations which belong to a certain narrative? I would like to research this idea of narrative
versus style, and therefore I will analyze three films: how can one theme and therefore genre
be presented in very different forms of style?
My field of research is strictly related to one director, namely Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Original film materials from AMORES PERROS (2000), 21 GRAMS (2003), and BABEL (2006)
will be presented. The narrative and the stylistics of the films could, in comparison, conclude
that the filmic realizations are more important to its genre-specificity than his portrayed
events. The films have their overall form in common, but the montage of the different scenes
is completely different. Visch and Tan write that events and their filmic realizations do not
exist separately from each other, which is why their interaction could not be apart from each
other: they are one stimulus.12 Iñárritu’s three films make perfect examples because of the
differences in stylistics which are combined with a similar narrative. Especially because all
three films aroused very different feelings for me personally, this will make an interesting
case study.
Firstly, I would like answer the question why genres exist and how the genre drama is
imbedded. Secondly, I will present a textual analysis of the three films, wherefore I will
consult a couple of film critics and their analyses, and my own analyses of narrative. As
according to Ben Singer, there are five combinations for defining features for melodrama,
which I will apply to all three of Iñárritu’s films. Thirdly, I have selected one fragment, or a
scene partly, from each film in which a similar event is being shown but of which its filmic
realization is presented very differently. In this second analysis and comparison, I will use the
method used by Bordwell and Thompson to put all three films on display. As mis-en-scene,
Visch and Tan: 304.
Warner: 65 – 66.
12 Idem: 305.
10
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cinematography and editing are part of the film stylistics, shot lengths, distances and camera
standpoints, movements and who is in the image will be discussed. Comparing the stylistic
elements to the narrative ones could conclude me as concluded by Valentijn Visch:
“realization cues are expected to be more genre-specific than events”.13
Genre and drama
A film has been given one specific, or multiple specific, genre(s). This does not
automatically mean that the spectator appreciates a specific film. Rick Altman writes that the
process of the genre is much more complicated than just replicating industry categorization,
therefore depends the notions of a film’s generic identity on multiple sources.14 Bordwell and
Thompson state that filmmakers, industry decision makers, critics and viewers are the
contributors to the way in which films are specified.15 Altman complements Bordwell and
Thompson that genres are established and named by the film-producing industry, but could be
seen as ‘made’ by collective responses of mass audience.16 As Altman and Bordwell and
Thompson share the idea that a certain film resembles another, a film has corresponding
thematic conventions, plot elements and/or film techniques.17 Because of this orientation of
films, audiences expect something familiar while watching a chosen genre.18 Altman writes
that the nature of the genre – as it is repetitive and cumulative – makes them also predictable,
but genres should not be treated as stable and easily identifiable objects of analyses, they are
complex situations.19
For understanding the role of individual films within the overall history of cinema, the
films must be described in sharable, generalizable terms. Altman claims that there is no
necessary connection between individual films and the “general term used to describe it”.20
An illusion is being created that a genre arises directly out of the film, instead of the texts
produced in reaction to the film.21 As Visch and Tan claim, the filmic realizations could be
defined as “tangible textures of the film”22: the perceptual surface the spectator encounters as
Visch and Tan: 304.
Altman, 144.
15 David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: an introduction ninth ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill,
2008), 319.
16 Altman, 16.
17 Bordwell and Thompson, 320.
18 Idem, 321.
19 Altman, 25, 84.
20 Idem, 88.
21 Ibidem.
22 Visch and Tan: 303.
13
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he or she watches and listens. Visch and Tan write agree with Bordwell that this surface is the
point of departure in moving to plot, theme, and feeling.23
Altman writes that although genres change over time, they will keep their
fundamentals. The broad range of meanings and the textual structure of films guarantee the
application of generic concepts.24 The constitution of film cycles, and therefore genres, as
Altman states, is a continual process, tied to a capitalist need: the one for differentiation in
product placement.25 Horace Newcombe and Paul Hirsch agree that it is the economic
interests of producers which help shape familiarity with generic patterns.26 Altman does not
agree and argues that it are the critics who lie “at the origin of most generic language, because
of their writings on uncertainty about a specific film.” 27
Visch and Tan write that there is not much empirical knowledge of how viewers get the
impression of a specific genre, if this is because of its style or its events.28 The reason one can
detect genre cues and refine genre categorizations is due to the categorization of films. It
helps the spectator process the film to get a maximum satisfaction out of it. Visch and Tan
researched what it is which is most effective for genre recognition: plots and setting, or
iconography and film style.29 Some particular events can be assumed to be typical for a
specific genre, because of the association the spectator makes between themes and plots which they interpret of the actions of the characters.30 After an event is demarcated it is fitted
into story schemas which activates genre-specific mental models. These models “enable the
viewers to make inferences about the content, order and outcomes of events to come.”31 These
schemas are tied to perceptual simulators, which reflect the surface of a films characteristics;
its realizations.32 Visch and Tan argue that filmic realizations are the first in perceptual cues,
which make them stronger cues than events cues, because they are perceived secondarily.33 In
order to be recognized as typical for a certain genre, there must not only be a common topic,
Visch and Tan: 303.
Altman, 29.
25 Idem, 64.
26 Horace Newcomb, and Paul M. Hirsch, “Television as a Cultural Forum,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies
(1983): 509.
27 Altman, 127.
28 Visch and Tan: 302.
29 Visch and Tan: 302.
30 Ibidem.
31 Ibidem.
32 Idem: 304.
33 Ibidem.
23
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but also have a common structure. Altman writes that unless both of these requirements apply,
a film will not be received as a member of a known genre.34
According to IMDB – The Internet Movie Database – all three films can be rated in
the genre ‘drama’. AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS are also to be called ‘thrillers’ and 21
GRAMS is also generated as a ‘crime’.35 Some films contain characteristics of more specific
genres, which makes clear the medium film has “changed color over the years”.36 Because of
our need for classifying, one has agreed on certain mutually exclusive categories.37 Altman
writes that the way in which we describe genres, categorize them and label them, one accepts
there is ‘genre mixing’.38 Visch and Tan make the statement that comic, action, drama and
nonfiction are genres which could be seen as the basics; from there on, subgenres could
evolve and will dissolve in time.39 Filmic realizations in drama films have many forms.
Micheal Stewart writes in “Irresistible Death: 21 Grams as Melodrama” (2007) about the
traditions in the melodrama: dysfunctional families, suffering women, and broken and
disoriented men. The characteristics of the melodrama are its expressive forms or realism and
affect, but the intensity of its narrative makes the film more realistic and therefore touching.40
Stewart writes that according to Ben Singer, there are two types of melodrama, namely the
pathetic and the action melodrama. Stewart focuses on the pathetic melodrama, which is
“looser in its narrative structure and peopled by figures equally damaged and deserving of
pathos”.41 There are a lot of combinations possible in defining features for melodrama and, as
Singer suggests, a narrative should contain at least two out of five combinations. These are as
follows: it must contain either pathos, overwrought emotion, sensationalism, moral
polarization, and / or a non-classical narrative structure.42 Singer thinks of melodrama as a
dramatic mode, not as a genre. Melodrama therefore could be seen as a fundamental mode
Altman, 23.
The Internet Movie Database, “Babel,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449467/
The Internet Movie Database, “21 Grams,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0315733/
The Internet Movie Database, “Amores Perros,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245712/
36 Altman, 19.
37 Idem, 124.
38 Idem, 123.
39 Visch and Tan: 305.
40 Michael Stewart, “Irresistible Death: 21 Grams as Melodrama,” Cinema journal 47:1 (2007): 49,
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.library.uu.nl/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&hid=19&sid=7572eb1
d-a13a-41ea-a818-3fcfc57e3046%40sessionmgr13
41 Idem, 50.
42 Ibidem.
34
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with the characteristics to make the spectator “feel sympathy for the virtues of beset
victims”.43
Alejandro González Iñárritu: “That’s when you get trapped in your own style and you
die” 44
Iñárritu’s play with narrative temporality make his films possible to articulate
resistance and makes them construct new identities through subverting dominant national and
global temporalities, deterritorializing national narration and destabilizing the grand narratives
of neoliberal globalization.45
In his films, Iñárritu explores the idea that our actions are chaotically interconnected in ways
mankind cannot foresee. Communication was his main study at the University of IberoAmerican in Mexico City, and is seen as one of his sources of inspiration,46 all three films are
seen as a trilogy in his research for human behavior and death.47 Iñárritu understands the
delicacy of performance, which is a process about a journey that the camera just happens to
witness.48 Iñárritu never thought himself as of representing a brand, but he is associated with
this style and appreciated because of it. 49 Terrence Rafferty writes that the first two films
which Iñárritu wrote with Guillermo Arriaga appear to model after an “auteurs film”, as it
reflects an unusual degree of equality in the films literary and visuals.50
Ben Singer, Melodrama and modernity: early sensational cinema and its contexts (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2001): 67.
44 Steven Zeitchik, “Cannes 2010: The (partial) reinvention of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu,” Los Angeles
Times Entertainment (2010), http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/05/alejandro-gonzalezinarritu-biutiful-javier-bardem.html?_r=true.
45 Brent Smith, “Re-narrating Globalization: Hybridity and Resistance in Amores Perros, Santitos and El
Jardín del Edén,” Rupkatha journal on interdisciplinary studies in humanities, 2:3 (USA: University of New
Mexico, 2010): 273, http://rupkatha.com/V2/n3/RenarratingGlobalization.pdf.
46 “Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu,” Directors Guide: Greatest Movie Directors (2010),
http://www.greatestdirectors.com/inarritu.html.
47 Peter Travers, “Babel,” Rolling Stone 1012 (2006),
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/babel-20061020.
“Alejandro Iñárritu – Top 25 Directors,” The Next Actor Studio (Houston: 2006),
http://www.nextactor.com/alejandro_inarrittu.html.
48 Zeitchik.
49 Zeitchik.
50 Terrence Rafferty, “Now Playing: Auteur vs. Auteur,” New York Times (2006),
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/movies/22raff.html?_r=1&ex=1162702800&en=6e2d6ee287eccc
b7&ei=5070.
43
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All three films evolve around a similar happening: there is an accident in which
different families are involved. The spectator will be introduced with each of these families,
from which the spectator is taken on the journey to shows both good and bad sides of every
individual. Visch writes that events need time to develop, defined and acknowledged, the
viewer might recognize a genre before he has recognized any events.51 This article could help
me conclude my analyses that within all three films the filmic realization are more genre
specific than the events being shown.
As Stewart writes, 21 GRAMS is a “pathetic film melodrama with what seems a decidedly nonclassical narrative structure”.52 Which applies to all three of Iñárritu’s films. The other two
films are little less extreme in fragmentation, little les repetitious and circular, but certainly all
of them have a non-classical narrative structures. As for a “devastated world-view[…] of
Oedipus and King Lear”53, BABEL and AMORES PERROS are also in the clear. When a film gets
written about in this way, surely this pathos covers one of the combinations of which a
melodrama should specify, as according to Ben Singer. All male characters are on difficult
journeys, of which Stewart gives the example of Jack’s journey into the wilderness, after
which he returns home for fatherhood.54 Moral polarization, and overwrought emotion could
be applied to character feelings and growth. Sensationalism and pathos will be applied to the
reception of its audience. Also the non-narrative classic form are detected in Iñárritu’s three
films: all five of the combinations Singer writes about will be found.
The three films offer a possibility of multiple interactions, with all elements woven
together to one peace. New connections can be made with each new scene Iñárritu grants it
spectator, which make the filmic material rupture the time and space continuum of classical
narrative.55 With the effect to dislodge the events of the film from a platform of causality
which normally links past, present and future together in a straight line, it now presents a
multi-layered temporality without a necessarily true past or future.56 The filmic material
Iñárritu gives the spectator is not like a chain of events, but his textual strategies are more like
a puzzle, of which each piece is only of value in accordance with surrounding pieces.57
Visch and Tan: 304.
Stewart: 50.
53 Idem: 50, 51.
54 Stewart: 51.
55 Ibidem.
56 Smith: 275.
57 Altman, 136.
51
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Altman argues that, because of the multi-focalization of the films, the lack of a clear
difference in internal and external views have the importance that the same footage can easily
be constructed in more than one way.58 This is central to Iñárritu’s films as most of the
involved characters are being filmed from their perspective, which is what romantic drama
depends on.59
Amores Perros
AMORES PERROS has a non-linear narrative structure which focuses on the experience of
different social and economic classes in Mexico City.60 The film opens seconds before the
point of convergence, when Octavio and Jorge are pursued in a car chase in Mexico City.
Octavio drives through a red light and runs into a car driven by Valeria. After focalizing from
Octavio to Valeria, there is a cut back in time. The ‘Octavio and Susana’ chapter begins. The
spectator sees how Valerio lives in a small house with his mother, brother and sister-in-law
with whom he is in love with. While earning money from dogfights, Octavio gets into trouble
with his competitor. The second chapter is that of Daniel and Valeria’s past. They move into
a big apartment, with view over Valeria’s picture hanging across the street. After the next
repetition of the car crash, the linearity is again disrupted: El Chivo’s story is introduced.61
After seeing the accident, he takes care of Octavio’s dog. Later, El Chivo finds his three dogs
bleeding to death one day. before, El Chivo got an offer to kill someone and El Chivo abducts
his target. When his client arrives on his doorstep, El Chivo leaves them both untied with a
gun in the middle.
After every repetition of the crash, focalization shifts to another character. This
approach to narrative structure could be seen as one of the combinations apparent to the
melodrama. Although the different chapters involve the different characters introduced, they
are alternated with short scenes of other characters, such as Il Chivo. Another of Singers
combinations, overwrought emotion, could be well applied to one of the main characters:
Valeria. She is a woman trapped “in the captivity of her domestic space in the aftermath of the
accident”.62 Her moving in with her boyfriend can be interpreted as her return to the inside of
her body, in which she as a model feels trapped in after the accident. Not able to walk, she
Idem, 137.
Ibidem.
60 Smith: 272.
61 Altman, 275.
62 Piersecă: 116.
58
59
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thinks her life falls apart – and so does her apartment. Finding her dog dead underneath the
floor eaten by rats, Valeria loses herself.
Climbing up the social ladder with dog fighting does not have a happy ending for
Octavio. Thinking he could run away with his love, saving money from the dogfights, he
loses everything in a couple of minutes. First Susana, his sister-in-law, turns down his
proposal to move, then his dog is being shot because his rival can’t stand to lose, to later
being chased by his rivals gang for stabbing him with a knife. Last but not least, he finds the
true death by causing an accident in which he not only destroyed his own life, but those of
others as well.
In the first scene of this film, Octavio drives the car while his friend Jorge in the front
seat tries to help the blooded dog in the backseat. They almost hit a truck, Octavio thinks he
got rid of his chasers. As he later looks in his back mirror, the yellow and red car is following
them again. Octavio drives through a red light, and crashes onto another car. The car burns
and a woman yells and ticks on the window as for trying to get out of the other car.63
With a length of two minutes and ten seconds, combined with a total sum of seventythree shots, this fragment has the average shot length of 1,8 seconds. The duration of the
shortest shot is 0,5 seconds and the longest shot has a duration of 7,7 seconds. The longest
shots are at the beginning and the end. The two extremes are shot number four and seventyone, proximally 7,7 and six seconds.64 At overall, the shots are characterized by close-ups and
very shaky handheld camera work. As for sound, the followings are generated: cars racing,
shattering car sounds, screaming, and laughing, and cursing, breaks being trapped and the
crash: shattering glass and flickering fire. During the crash itself, shots sixty-two till seventy
are the shortest: with a range between 0,5 till 1,3. These shots alternate a couple of long shots
which are not handheld but still. All these fast flashes of images makes the film a sensation to
watch, also one of the five combinations for defining melodrama.
21 grams
Not structured as a classical narrative, short scenes alternate each other in a non-chronological
order, showing how the lives of Jack, Christina and Paul are attached to one another in 21
GRAMS. In an early stage, the spectator learns there has been an accident, but there are only
two moments, after the first half of the film, where the surroundings of the accident are shown
Guillermo Arriaga (prod/aut.), & Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, (prod/reg). (2000). Amores Perros [film].
Mexico: Filmex.
64 Anne, “ Amores Perros (2000)” 08-05-2012. http://www.cinemetrics.lv/movie.php?movie_ID=11423
63
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– not the accident itself. Both before and after the accident, the spectator learns about these
characters in short fragments which are in a non-chronological way successive. Paul gets a
new heart while he thinks he is dying and his girlfriend still wants his baby. He can’t stand not
knowing who’s heart is in his body and goes searching for his donors relatives. He finds his
donor Micheals wife, Christina, and follows her. After making contact, a love affair begins.
Christina wants them to go after the man who killed her husband and daughters to kill him,
while Jack, an ex-con who turned to God, was in shock after running over Christina’s loved
ones. He wanted to go to prison for his crimes, but Jacks wife wants him with his family and
gets him out, after which Jack leaves his family because of his guilt. Christina and Paul
follow him to a motel, where Paul threatens him. Later, Jack returns to their motel room,
when Paul and Christina get into a fight. Paul shoots himself, and Jack drives them to the
hospital, where he says he shot Paul. While Paul is being operated and dies, Christina hears
her blood couldn’t help him as she used drugs, which she shouldn’t because she is pregnant.65
Jack Jordan thinks it’s Jesus’ way of punishing him and at first he drives home in
panic, while later he realizes he could have saved one of the girls and therefore tries to kill
himself in prison. His overwrought emotion, as another combination of melodrama Stewart
writes about, brings him in a state of compassion. Christina and Jack face greater adversity
than Paul does, as Paul is the primary soul-searcher. Jack does not want to live anymore so he
goes to Paul “in search for death”66 which results in a fight in which Paul, the lonely hero,
shoots himself. Jack is given the purpose to save Paul and drives him to the hospital, making a
false confession in saying he was the one shooting Paul.67
The scenes alternate each other very fast, creating a kind of sensation for the spectator. For
example when Christina getting a call with negative news. A minute later, Jack’s wife drives
by the surroundings of the accident. then, Christina is in the hospital where – the spectator can
conclude - is being told what happened in the accident. Again around a minute later, Jack
comes home and tells his wife what he did. After this scene, Jack drives a car with a blooded
Paul and Christina in the back. Then, Paul wakes up in the hospital after his heart transplant,
and so forth.68
Guillermo Arriaga (prod/aut.), & Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, (prod/reg). (2003). 21 Grams [film]. USA:
Focus Features.
66 Stewart: 53.
67 Ibidem.
68 Arriaga, and Iñárritu (2003).
65
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The scene is which the accident itself is happening, has a duration of one minute and
four seconds. A total of seven shots with an average length of 9,3 seconds makes this scene
have the longest shot duration while the fragment itself is the shortest one. Two young girls
go after a pigeon, while the father is calling their mother to say they are on their way home. A
gardener is blowing the leaves from the lawn as the girls and their father walk by, while
gardening, they have a short conversation, in which the focalization shifts to the gardener. The
gardener keeps doing his job, when a car drives by and hears it brake. The gardener runs
towards the sound, leaving his blower on the ground. Then, the sound of an accelerating car. 69
As for this whole time the gardener is being shown, the accident itself is never imaged.The
last shot is the longest one, with a duration more than half of the whole scene: 35,8 seconds.
The shortest shot is the middle one: 1,2 seconds.70 This shot contains a slightly low angled
gardener seeing the father with his two daughters walking by. All shots are handheld, with the
exception of the last shot: the gardener in an extreme long shot with a leaf blower gardening a
neighborhood garden, a car driving by, the sound of a break of a car, the gardener who looks
around, let’s go of his blower and runs in the direction the car drove in. after this, the
spectator can hear a car driving away and still sees the blower on the lawn blowing around.
The other shots are moving, differing from tracking to panning shots.71 Following first the
girls who went after a pigeon on the street, or the father on the phone leaving a message for
his wife. After these first two shots, there is a change in focalization: from the point of the
gardener, the accident is being shown. As he knows nothing, he only hears the accident, as
does the spectator.
Babel
BABEL tells, like Iñárritu’s earlier films, several distinct stories that reveal themselves as a
story in which people’s “connections to one another prove to be more powerful than we (or
they) had thought.” 72 So families from all over the world are shown: Morocco, Tokyo, San
Diego and around the Mexican border. As no life is perfect, these certainly are not. The
characters are divided by language barriers, not only in the sense of speech but also sign
language. The American journalist Susan and her husband Richard go on a ‘healing trip’ in
Morocco, where Susan gets shots in the shoulder. This is stated as a terrorist attack, while in
Ibidem.
Anne, “21 Grams (2003),” CineMetrics, http://www.cinemetrics.lv/movie.php?movie_ID=11425.
71 Anne, “21 Grams (2003),” CineMetrics, http://www.cinemetrics.lv/movie.php?movie_ID=11423
72 Rafferty.
69
70
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fact it are ‘innocent’ young Moroccan boys who are playing with a new gun their father
bought for shooting jackals. This gun was a gift from Japanese Yakusho, whose daughter is
deaf-mute and appears to have serious attention issues. No more lines between this
disconnected girl and the rest of the characters, which are all related to the couple on holidays
in Morocco. Their kids are being babysat by Amelia, a Mexican maid, who was planning on
going to her son’s wedding in Mexico. When the parents cannot get home to San Diego, she
takes the boy and girl and drives with them and her nephew Anwar to the wedding. During
their return to the United States, Anwar acts strange at the border control, and drives away as
fast as possible to avoid the borders. Being followed, Anwar decides to drop off his aunt and
the two kids, leaving them behind in the desert to wait for borderline to pick them up. In
shock herself, Amelia leaves the two kids behind to go and search for border control. All
misunderstandings make Amelia lose her license to stay in the USA. Meanwhile, Susan is
with the ‘finest’ doctor in the area, but as he is very kind, his localness does not make him the
right person to keep her alive. While waiting for a rescuing helicopter, Richard thinks his wife
is going to die and the search for the attacker begins. With guilt, the boys try to cover up their
fault, but with their father being held responsible, the miscommunication is at its top.
Communication becomes “a matter of life and death”,73 when Susan is being shot in a
country which does not understand their language. For Rinko Kikuchi, the Japanese girl, it
seems impossible because of her sexual excessive body language to communicate with the
world around her. Her self-pity drives her to do strange things, enough overwrought emotion
for all characters together. Anwar should be seen as the man who doesn’t understand the
morals of this world; leaving kids out to die in the desert. Also, Richard is on a difficult
journey, trying to heal from a misbirth, his wife almost dies trying to recover their
relationship. Which will we stronger than ever, it is clear how much the two love each other.
In a fragment of the first seen, two young brothers in Morocco are herding sheep into the
mountains. They are talking about an earlier event: the girl the youngest brother has been
looking at while she was undressing. After a short while the youngest brother is looking up a
little place for himself behind some rocks and starts entertaining himself. While he is playing
with himself, the eldest brother tries out the rifle he has been given by his father for protecting
the herd against jackals. The youngest brother turns to his older brother trying if the rifle can
73
Rafferty.
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shoot the three kilometers they have been told it does. They are aiming at the road a couple of
miles further, where a bus is driving by. The youngest brother shoots, when at first they think
nothing happened, but when they see the bus stopping, realizing he hit the bus and they run
away.74
The fragment duration has a total of three minutes and fifty-three seconds. It has a
total sixty-four shots, with a average length of 3,6 seconds. The longest shot has a duration of
20,7 seconds and the shortest is only 0,8 seconds long. Most of the shots have a slightly
handheld posture and overall are straight on, with exceptions of a few very high or low
angles.75 Some longer during shots change camera distances. For example, a shot which starts
as a medium close up of the hand and hip from the youngest brother and later panning up to
see the older brother in a long shot shooting with the new rifle.76 The exceptional long shots
do not have a very wide framework, mostly tracking shots. One of the first peaks, shot
number five, is an extreme establishing shot in which the brothers are sitting in the mountains
watching the sheep. The shorter shots are clustered rather in the beginning of the fragment,
but later return and alternate with slightly longer shots. The first set of shots with a duration
shorter than two seconds, have a framework of extreme long shots and medium long shots
changing in full body shots. Shots number fifteen and sixteen are proximally 3,3 and 6,4
seconds long, a very high and low angle, as point of view from the youngest brother watching
up to the tree.
Three films in comparison: prototypical events and their filmic realizations
BABEL explicitly concerns the difficulty and necessity of communication. The task of making
oneself understood is shown to be grueling, arduous work, due to the different countries the
events unfold in.77 AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS are more concentrated geographically and
linguistically, as characteristics of a multiple-narrative strategy. Rafferty writes that the first
two films have been praised for the ingenuity and complexity of their narrative construction,
their content and their elaborate structures.78
Ahmed Abounouom (prod.), Guillermo Arriaga (aut.), & Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, (prod./reg.).
(2006). Babel [film]. USA: Paramount Vantage.
75 Anne, “Babel (2006),” CineMetrics, http://www.cinemetrics.lv/movie.php?movie_ID=11371#nogo53.
76 Abounouom , Arriaga & Iñárritu, Babel (2006).
77 Rafferty.
78 Ibidem.
74
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After receiving worldwide credits for all three films, it could be stated that their
pathos, emotional identification and association of the spectator, concludes that all five
combination apply to all three films. For example, ratings for all three films at the Internet
Movie Database – every user can vote – are 8.2 for AMORES PERROS with more than ninetytwo thousand votes, 7.8 for 21 GRAMS with over 113 thousand votes and BABEL gets a 7.5
from over 142 thousand spectators. Although IMDB is not a guideline for all best films, it is
an indicator for film fans.
As all characters are shown before and after the accident, the spectator is being
acquainted with the characters and sees they are not all heroes or bad guys. A specific ‘hero
and heroine style’ as Capra uses cannot be detected in Iñárritu’s films.79 For example Jack in
21 GRAMS. You would think: he is a bad guy because he has been in jail before, now he ran
over a family and he leaves them on the street to die. No, Iñárritu shows how the ex-con
struggles with himself and regrets his decision of leaving the man and children on the street to
die. The violence and chaos presented in the films, consequences in mindless aggression and
stupidity, frustrations and pursuits of selfish goals. But when the brutalities give way, a
unified, reconciling, we’re-all-in-this-together vision arises.80
The films have an overall and comparable form, but the length of the scenes differ
from the each other which makes fragmentation completely different. BABEL has relatively
long scenes, which could be up to twelve minutes. 21 GRAMS is shown in relatively short
scenes, around one or two minutes.81 Duration of the fragment for 21 GRAMS isn’t even a
minute time, while the scene in BABEL could be stretched from the beginning on to eight
minutes and 25 seconds.82 All three fragments differ from each other: the usage of close-ups
and loads of camera-movements and handheld shots are characteristic for AMORES PERROS.
The uses of long-during and/or much moving wide shots are characteristics for BABEL, while
long shots for 21 GRAMS are still and alternate little moving closer shots. After every
repetition of the crash, in AMORES PERROS, the narrative is disrupted and another character is
being followed towards the accident.83 With a length of two minutes and ten seconds,
combined with a total sum of seventy-three shots, the fragment of AMORES PERROS has the
Richards: 68.
Rafferty.
81 Arriaga, and Iñárritu (2003).
82 Abounouom , Arriaga & Iñárritu, Babel (2006).
83 Smith: 272.
79
80
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fastest rating in shot changing of all three films. 21 GRAMS has the lowest change in shots,
seven. This fragment also contains the longest shot of all fragments: 36 seconds. BABELs
fragments have the longest duration of all three films, with an average shot length higher than
21 GRAMS, but lower than AMORES PERROS has.
Conclusion
All three films are argued to be drama films, some with hints of other genres, but their leading
genre is drama. The five combinations Singer suggests to argue whether a film is a
melodrama – and as melodrama is subject to drama – or not could mostly all be counted for
all of the three films. As all films have a different narrative beginning, the overall structure of
all three films overlap sincerely. For AMORES PERROS other characters are introduced after the
accident. BABEL introduces its characters in the first three scenes. In both BABEL and AMORES
PERROS the accident is shown in its first scene and later from another point of view. This is
different for 21 GRAMS, in which the characters are introduced first, when later the spectator
realizes there has been an accident and knows how the different characters are connected to
each other. Other than BABEL and AMORES PERROS, the accident itself is never explicitly
shown in 21 GRAMS.
The montage and the way the events are being shown differ from each film. As for the
scenes, their duration differ in each film, which has an effect on the chronological
representation of the narrative. BABEL, for example, has scenes which can take up to twelve
minutes. This means there are a lot less scenes in total then counts for 21 GRAMS which could
be around one or two minutes. Therefore BABEL is less a-chronologically structured and more
events are presented per scene. Because the characters in AMORES PERROS aren’t as widely
spread over the world as in the other two films, this means the overlap per scene with the lead
characters is much more present, which also means less fragmentation and interruption
between scenes.
Every fragment in a film itself is structured differently, but an overall stylistic form for
each film applies: AMORES PERROS has more handheld and shocking camera movements,
more close-ups and shorter shots than the other two films do. The scenes in 21 GRAMS differ
from each other and some are more still or handheld than other scenes are. Often, close-ups
are used, but not in such a rushy way as they do in AMORES PERROS.
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Yes, because of their narratives and overall structures, the films are given the
same genre. More for the reactions of their audiences and the journeys the characters make,
than the style of montage in each scene is formed. This means the realization cues Visch and
Tan write about, are not more genre specific. As for Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel
counts, they do not fit in the idea from Visch and Tan, but their forms are important in the
spectators experiences: filmic events and realizations do complement each other and could be
seen as one stimulus. Melodrama is too broad and has ‘hazy boundaries’, wherefore there is
not just one filmic realization for displaying events.
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Literature:
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Grams [film]. USA: Focus Features.
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21. Travers, Peter. “Babel.” Rolling Stone 1012 (2006).
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versus genre-typical filmic realizations on film viewers' genre recognition.” Poetics
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Inarritu.” Los Angeles Times Entertainment (2010). 14-06-2012.
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