Besides being really busy at work, I also haven't written in a very long time because I took my time to think about the movie that I'm about to review. Amores perros tells three stories connected by a fatal car accident. It represents the devision between classes in any society, and in a very strange way all three stories have something to do with people's love for dogs. This movie impressed the hell out of me.
As soon as I finished watching it, I thought it was pretty good, but I kept thinking about it more and more, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. It's not really helping me write this review because I feel so emotional about it that it's hard for me to put all my thoughts together into some sort of relevant order. I don't normally enjoy overtly graphic movies, and this one contains quite a few disturbing dog fighting scenes, but in Amores Perros they seemed just right. I've read some reviews that say that the movie is about the cruelty of humans towards animals and towards each other. I can't agree with it because the way I see it, the movie is about love.
We see people's romantic love, weather it's the beginning, or the end of a relationship, and we see people's love for dogs. Octavio loved his dog, even though he made him participate in dog fights, but we all saw that it wasn't "just business" to him. Valeria loved her dog too, although it did seem weird to me that she didn't try to get him up from under the floorboards. And I guess El Chivo's love was the most pure because he was able to forgive Negro, Octavio's fightdog that killed the rest of his dogs. So to me the bottom line is that love is imperfect, it's cruel, and it brings a lot of pain to the ones we love.
Of course, there's a lot more to this movie. Gael García Bernal's performance was amazing. I think Alejandro González Iñárritu had directed only four feature length films, three of them are his so-called "trilogy of death", and the fourth (Biutiful) came out this year. I watched Babel is 2006, and thought it was fantastic, 21 Grams is good too, but Amores perros is a masterpiece.
Interesting fact: Unlike most films, a disclaimer stating that no animals were harmed in the making of the movie comes at the beginning instead of being buried in the credits.
Favorite quote: "If you want to make God laugh... tell Him your plans".
I not only never seen this movie, I've never heard of it as well. But now, I'm going to check it out!
ReplyDeleteLike Pat, I have not seen this movie. Unlike Pat, I have seen and heard many recommendations for this movie. However, now that you have mentioned there is dog fighting I wonder if I can even stomach it.
ReplyDeleteJust a couple of years ago I would have turned it off as soon as I saw dogs fighting, but after watching more than half of IMDb 250, I'm getting used to stuff like that LOL.
ReplyDeleteYep, another who has never heard of it until now. A keen animal lover, could I watch this? would be my question, its bound to raise a few eyebrows, but there has to be a movie that does cover this subject at some point as it does happen and might even raise awareness. It definately seems worth a watch to make up my own mind, even if it might pull on the heart strings a lot.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I finally watched a movie none of you have seen :) I'm a big animal lover myself. Watching dog fights is a little disturbing, but there's really not that many of them. If any of you guys get to see it, let me know what you think.
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