DIRECTOR ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU'S OWN EXPERIENCES ADD WEIGHT TO '21 GRAMS' ALL INVOLVED SHARE FILM'S PROVOCATIVE EXPLORATION OF LIFE AND DEATH.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

For his American feature debut, ``21 Grams,'' acclaimed Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu set the bar of difficulty well above the language barrier.

He and his ``Amores Perros'' screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga took that international hit's time-mangling narrative structure and deep examination of human agony to unflinching extremes in their new collaboration. ``21 Grams,'' whose title references the amount of weight supposedly lost at the moment of death, is an unrelenting meditation on the big issues that try mankind's collective soul: loss, grief, commitment, faith, hatred, love, guilt and depression.

Also like ``Amores Perros,'' the film moves forward and backward in time from an auto accident. But rather than three discrete story lines, ``21 Grams'' presents a disorienting but ultimately quite enthralling collage of incidents before and after the tragedy in the lives of three people it ties together. There's Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro), an ex-con whose efforts to put his life aright through Jesus are shattered when he accidentally runs over a man and his two young daughters; Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts), the victims' wife and mother, whose grief draws her back toward self-destructive, premarriage habits; and Paul Rivers (Sean Penn), a dying college professor whose life is saved by the dead man's transplanted heart, and whose subsequent sense of obligation toward Cristina takes surprising and alarming turns.

``People say, 'Well, ``21 Grams'' is really intense,' '' Gonzalez Inarritu, a former Mexico City radio personality and TV commercials mogul, confirms in less-than-perfect but highly expressive English. ``And I always say back, 'Life is quiet?' I mean, life is pretty intense, it's a shout. It may be that we don't want to hear it, but you just have to watch the news. We may try to not watch it just to survive a little bit, but I think there is a lot going on right now.''

More than popcorn

Arriaga, who has taught writing at the college level for two decades, is as quietly analytical as his filmmaking partner is extroverted. But he shares Gonzalez Inarritu's strong belief that movies should be much more than escapist entertainment; that they can enlighten us about life by illuminating its worst sufferings.

``I'm an optimistic person,'' Arriaga gently insists. ``I think my two films are films of hope - though, obviously, about a special way to get to hope and love. I think that part of my work as a writer is to open people to pain, to understand that death is there, but that it's a part of life. And to know that to have much more of a sense of life, you have to understand death.''

And that, obviously, has garnered strong responses. Although ``21 Grams'' was originally written in Spanish with a Mexico setting, the international success of ``Amores Perros'' afforded Gonzalez Inarritu and Arriaga - both lifelong fans of American culture - the opportunity to shoot their second feature in Memphis, Tenn., and New Mexico.

This enabled the casting of some of their own biggest fans. Penn was one of the first American actors to call Gonzalez Inarritu just to congratulate him on ``Amores Perros.'' Australian actress Watts, on a roll with art-house and box-office triumphs ``Mulholland Drive'' and ``The Ring,'' loved ``Perros'' so much she agreed to be in ``21 Grams'' before even seeing its script. Meanwhile, Del Toro, who is of Puerto Rican heritage and grew up in Pennsylvania, proved so convincing in his Oscar-winning ``Traffic'' role as a Mexican border policeman that Gonzalez Inarritu knew he just had to work with him.

So the dream cast came together. But when they all got their English script translations, even this formidable and motivated ensemble was somewhat vexed. Arriaga had structured the film with few scenes adhering to any kind of chronological order.

``It is pretty disorienting,'' Del Toro admits. ``It's like you're meeting all of these people for the first time, including yourself. You don't know what's going on, and in the next scene it's, well, what's going on here? But, y'know, I've read Faulkner, I've seen movies that have had a kind of similar structure. So I was intrigued, and I knew, somehow, something was going to pay off.''

Indeed, Arriaga cites the great American novelist William Faulkner as one of his primary influences; when others took time off during the Memphis leg of the shoot to visit Graceland, the Mexican writer pilgrimaged to Faulkner's home in nearby Mississippi.

``I wanted a yin/yang effect,'' Arriaga says of his mixed structure. ``I wanted contradictory themes. For example, in one scene we see death and in the next one we see life.''

Wisely, though, Gonzalez Inarritu saw to it that each actor received a chronologically ordered version of the script. He also shot the picture in as successive a narrative order as budget and scheduling permitted.

``I think that was an excellent choice,'' Watts says. ``I mean, the first time I read it I thought, wow, this is such a great structure and it makes for really good tension and emotion and suspense, all of those things. And when you go to see the movie, it's not confusing, but it's like, 'OK, what's going on?, let me concentrate, oh I get it, that piece goes there.' It's a little bit of extra work for you, but I love that structure.

``When you're filming it, though, you really need to be on top of it, so that when the movie plays like it read, every beat is correct and the pitches are at the right place and all the building-up and dropping-off moments are in the most truthful, honest way.''

The final performances are all that and devastatingly more.

``He was kind of like a ticking bomb,'' Del Toro says of his character, ``very radical in some ways and, you could say, not the brightest cookie in the jar and, at the same time, very aggressive.'' But the actor also had to realistically navigate a theme too potentially controversial to appear much these days in American movies, independent or otherwise: religious disillusionment.

``I really tried hard not to condescend on religion,'' Del Toro cautions. ``I think there is a lot of good in religion, though there might be some bad. But I was quite concerned that I didn't want religion to be the bad guy. It's not religion that's Jack's problem; it's the character who is doing the best he can to understand religion in the simplistic way that he does, but my intention was to make it clear that what the guy was going through was depression as plain as day.''

As is Cristina, understandably, which evolves into a vengeful rage of biblical proportions. Oddly enough, it's the usually explosive Penn's Paul who tries to hold some center of gentleness and reason. When he reveals to Cristina a secret he's been carrying, she unleashes upon him one of the most hellish furies ever filmed.

``It was, physically, really difficult for me,'' the petite Watts says of the violent and emotional attack. ``I had to beat him up and cry and scream. There was no stagecraft, no I'm-using-my-technical-voice here. It was just as raw and as real as I could be. That was really draining; we shot a bunch of takes from my angle and then we got around to Sean. It felt difficult to hit him; I can't imagine what it felt like to be hit. I had bruises on my hands!''

Close to home

As hard as such demands may have been on the actors, directing such scenes might have been toughest on Gonzalez Inarritu. Though naturally gregarious, the filmmaker is still clearly haunted by the infant he and his wife lost shortly after delivery several years ago.

Not one to hypothetically preach to audiences, Gonzalez Inarritu employed that tragedy as a measure of authenticity for ``21 Grams.''

``The two films I have done are really personal,'' the director affirms. ``Obviously, they have my vision of the world. And just from my experience, I feel that when you have been through a very dark moment, illogically I would say that it can bring you to a very strange way of light. There is not a way that you can understand light without knowing darkness, or vice versa. When bad things happen to you, you get more aware and more in touch with what life is about. You appreciate things a little bit more than before, and you put all of the other things in perspective. And, at some point, that can really destroy, or that can give you wisdom.''

As disorienting and downbeat as ``21 Grams'' may be, it is, as the dour optimist Arriaga puts it, a hopeful work in the end.

``I'm an atheist, and what that has brought to my life is a kind of understanding that this is our only chance,'' the writer says. ``I don't have this feeling that I will have another life. This is my only chance to reveal myself and to have this rebirth. And '21 Grams' is about how we define ourselves through our relationships with others.''

``It's a road picture through the soul,'' Del Toro reckons. ``And there's gotta be some hope; if not, there's the window. Do we always learn? No. But there's always hope of understanding.''

``I really hope that people connect with this movie,'' Watts concludes. ``It's a really powerful film with real meaning in it, and people can take something from it with them. I happen to think that this is the kind of film that makes cinema exciting and worth it.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- cover -- color) TRIO FOR TRAUMA

Watts, Penn, Del Toro scale the emotional challenge of '21 Grams'

(4) no caption (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)

(5) - Naomi Watts