I have long had a concept for a motion picture that I would like to see. By concept, I mean that I never developed any characters or plot, just a basic idea. Here it is:
The movie opens with a classic chase sequence ending in a spectacular crash; then the balance of the movie is about the events that led up to the chase and crash and the various people whose lives are forever changed as a result. But the protagonists of the film are not the main players involved in the chase, but the other people, the ones who were the innocent bystanders. The ones whom you would ordinarily never think about because their involvement was just incidental to the main plot.
This concept has been rolling around in my head for several years now, so imagine my surprise to find that Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu had actually directed a movie with that concept back in 2000.
"Amores Perros", which freely translated means "Love's a Bitch", is about three sets of characters whose stories intersect at that climactic car crash; one group is wealthy, another is working class, and the third is homeless. After showing the crash, the film flashes back to the incident that triggered the chain of events: a dog runs away from home.
Apparently director Iñarritu has a propensity for stories that are triggered by seemingly innocuous events, because he's also the director of the new film "Babel" (starring Brad Pitt) whose plot is also set in motion by an apparently trivial occurrence.
I found the film, which runs about two and a half hours, to be utterly engrossing. But a couple words of warning. The movie was filmed in Spanish, so it has subtitles. That doesn't bother me, but I know some people find titles annoying.
Also, something you definitely need to know from the start: No animals were harmed during the making of this movie. Really.
Posted by jt at November 5, 2006 11:57 AM