Down With Dumbing Down

Ever since breaking onto the international scene with Amores Perros three years ago, lots of people have been keen to see what Mexican director Alejandro Gonz
ez Iñárritu would do next. It was no surprise, then, that the sold-out LFF premiere of 21 Grams attracted its fair share of curious film folk. Dirty Pretty Things director Stephen Frears, Miranda Richardson and Jason Flemyng all turned out to catch the film. As did Donnie Darko star Jake Gyllenhaal, who arrived late, so only had time to blurt out, “I love Canada” to a Canadian TV crew before dashing into the screening. But it was Iñárritu and the film’s star, Naomi Watts, who caused the biggest stir. The American set film finds Watts as a wife and mother battling addiction and grief after a tragic accident results in her crossing paths with heart-transplant patient Sean Penn and reformed ex-con Benicio Del Toro. “I think she’s the most beautiful, soulful person I’ve played,” Watts to us. “I tend to always gravitate towards women who go through some kind of crisis and what interests me is when you’re able to find a way out of it, and I think she does. I think she’s forced into the most unimaginable pain in life and not only does she find a way through it but she finds a new way to live with hope.” Told in a non-linear, fractured style that makes the narrative trickery of Amores Perros look straightforward, it’s certainly a film that will keep audiences on their toes. “I think this is a way to tell the story that has a respect for the audience and doesn’t treat the audience as stupid people,” said Iñárritu. “The great novels and the great plays always reveal things little by little and that is the case here. I trust the audience basically.” “I think audiences want that,” Watts confided to Empire Online. “It’s us, the people that are making the films, that tend to dumb them down, but I think audiences want more than that. They become an active part of this film because they have to work to understand it and when it all comes together it’s much more rewarding.”