Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Trilogy of Death (Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo Arriaga, 2000, 2003, 2006) (自體的心理學)(車行形上學)

這三個劇本,都有一種,「讓人無法忍受的瑣碎」,

有趣的是,我們正常的人生,實情就是,這種「讓人無法忍受的瑣碎」,

更有趣的是,這個三部曲,告訴我們,你必須要,瑣碎三次,以至四次,


Amores perros is the first installment in González Iñárritu's "Trilogy of Death", succeeded by 21 Grams and Babel

Amores perros (2000)


Plot

The film is constructed from three distinct stories linked by a car crash that brings the characters briefly together.

Octavio y Susana

Octavio (Gael García Bernal) is in love with his brother's wife Susana (Vanessa Bauche) and dislikes the way she is abused by his brother Ramiro (Marco Pérez). Octavio tries to persuade her to run away with him. Local thug Jarocho, happy after winning in a dog fight, lets his dog loose on some strays and is threatened by a homeless guy wielding a machete. Eventually, Jarocho sics his dog on Octavio's rottweiler, Cofi, but his own dog is killed instead. Octavio and his friend Jorge, realising Cofi's potential, become involved in the dogfighting scene. Octavio makes enough money to flee with Susana, and pays Mauricio, the owner of the dogfighting venue, to get Ramiro beaten up. Afraid, Ramiro steals the money and leaves with Susana. Struggling financially, Octavio accepts a challenge by Jarocho to participate in a private dogfight, with no outside bets. Cofi is about to win, but Jarocho shoots him. The infuriated Octavio stabs Jarocho in the stomach. Pursued by Jarocho's thugs, Octavio finds himself in a car chase with Jorge and the wounded Cofi. A collision follows; Jorge dies and Octavio is badly injured.

Daniel y Valeria

Magazine publisher Daniel (Álvaro Guerrero) leaves his family to live with his lover Valeria (Goya Toledo), a Spanish supermodel. On the day they move in together, Valeria's leg is severely broken in Octavio's car crash and she is unable to continue working as a model. As Valeria is recuperating in Daniel's apartment, her dog Richie disappears under a broken floorboard and becomes trapped. The missing dog triggers tension and arguments for the couple, leading to doubts about their relationship on both sides. Trying to rescue the dog, Valeria again injures her leg; Daniel finds her hours later. Valeria's new leg injury results in severe arterial thrombosis and eventually gangrene. Her leg is amputated. While she is in the hospital, Daniel finally rescues Richie from the floorboards. When she returns, Valeria drives her wheelchair through the torn-up lovenest and looks out of the window expecting to see a billboard bearing her likeness, only to find it has been removed.

El Chivo y Maru

The homeless guy occasionally seen in Octavio's story is revealed to be a professional hitman called El Chivo (Emilio Echevarría). He is a former private school teacher who was imprisoned after committing terrorist acts for guerrillamovements. He is trying to make contact with his daughter, Maru, whom he abandoned when he began his guerrilla involvement and who believes that he is dead. He is about to perform a hit on a businessman when Octavio's car crash interrupts him. During the chaos at the car crash, he steals Octavio's money and takes the wounded Cofi to his warehouse hideout to nurse the dog back to health. One day, while El Chivo is out, Cofi kills the other mongrel dogs El Chivo is caring for. He is about to kill Cofi, but decides against it. Meanwhile, Octavio's brother Ramiro is shot and killed during an attempted bank robbery.

At Ramiro's funeral, Octavio meets Susana, and again attempts to convince her to run away with him, but she angrily rejects the notion. A few days later, Octavio is shown waiting at the bus station for Susana. She never shows up, and Octavio does not board the bus. El Chivo learns that his client and his intended victim are half-brothers. He leaves both men alive and chained to separate walls with a pistol within reach between them, their fate left uncertain. He then breaks into his daughter Maru's house and leaves her a large bundle of money along with a message on her answering machine explaining what happened to him. When he is about to tell Maru that he loves her, the answering machine stops recording. He then goes to an autoshop, where he sells the client's SUV. The mechanic asks him the dog's name, and El Chivo calls him "Negro" ("Black"). After El Chivo receives the money for the car, he and Negro walk away, disappearing into the horizon.


21 Grams (2003)


Plot

The story is told in a nonlinearmanner. The following is a chronological summary of the plot:

Jack Jordan is a former convict who is using his new-found religious faith to recover from drug addiction and alcoholism. Paul Rivers is a mathematics professor with a dedicated wife, Mary, and has a fatal heart condition. Unless he receives a new heart from an organ donor, he will not live longer than a month. Mary wants him to donate his sperm so she can have his baby even if he dies. Cristina Peck is a recovering drug addict and now lives a normal suburban life with a supportive husband and two children. She is a loving mother and active swimmer who has left behind her days of drugs and alcohol. These three separate stories/characters become tied together one evening when Jack kills Cristina's husband and children in a hit-and-run accident. Cristina's husband's heart is donated to Paul, who begins his recovery.

Cristina is devastated by the loss and returns to drugs and alcohol. Paul is eager to begin normal life again, but he hesitantly agrees to his wife's idea of artificial insemination as a last-ditch effort to get pregnant. During consultations with a doctor before the procedure, Paul learns about an abortion that Mary had undergone after they had separated in the past. Angered, Paul ends the relationship. He becomes very inquisitive about whose heart he has. He learns from a private detective that the heart belonged to Cristina's husband and begins to follow the widowed Cristina around town.

Jack is stricken with guilt following the accident and starts using drugs again. Despite his wife's protests to keep quiet and conceal his guilt, Jack tells her that his "duty is to God" and turns himself in. While incarcerated, he clashes verbally with a pastor who had helped him after his last incarceration, claims that God had betrayed him, loses his will to live, and attempts suicide. He is released after Cristina declines to press charges against him, as she realizes that incarcerating Jack will not bring her family back. When Jack is released, he is unable to reincorporate himself into normal family life, and instead leaves home to live as a transient, working as a manual laborer.

Paul finds an opportunity to meet Cristina and eventually reveals how the two of them are connected. She is initially furious and forces him out, but soon reconsiders. Desperately needing each other, they continue their relationship. Though Paul has a new heart, his body is rejecting the transplant and his outlook is grim. As Cristina begins to dwell more on her changed life and the death of her family, she becomes obsessed with taking revenge against Jack. She goads Paul into agreeing to murder him.

Paul meets with the private detective who had found Cristina for him. The detective tells Paul that Jack is living in a motel and sells Paul a gun. Paul and Cristina check into the motel where Jack is staying. When Jack is walking alone, Paul grabs him and leads him out into a clearing at gunpoint intending to kill him. However, Paul is unable to kill Jack, who himself is confused, shaking and pleading during the event. Paul fires three shots into the ground and tells Jack to "just disappear," then returns to the motel and lies to Cristina about Jack's death. Later that night, while they are sleeping, Paul and Cristina are awakened by a noise outside their door. It's Jack, who, still consumed by guilt, orders Paul to actually kill him and end his misery. A struggle ensues, during which Cristina blind-sides Jack and starts beating him with a wooden lamp. Paul collapses, gets hold of the gun, and accidentally shoots himself.

Jack and Cristina rush Paul to the hospital. Still believing he deserves to be punished for his hit-and-run, Jack tells the police that he was the one who shot Paul, but is released when his story cannot be confirmed. Paul dies, and the conflict between Cristina and Jack remains unresolved (they meet in the waiting room after Paul's death; if they have a conversation, it is not shown). When Cristina offers to donate blood for Paul in the hospital, she learns that she is pregnant; the doctor urges Cristina to quit using drugs. After Paul's death, Cristina is seen tentatively preparing for the new child in one of her daughter's bedrooms, which she had previously been unable to enter after her daughter's death. Jack is shown returning to his family.


Babel (2006)


Babel contains four main storylines with seemingly unconnected characters. The stories are not told in linear or chronological order. As the movie unfolds, the audience learns how each plot is intertwined with the others.

Morocco

In a desert in Morocco, Abdullah, a goatherder, buys a gun from his neighbor to shoot the jackals that have been preying on his goats. Abdullah gives the rifle to his two young sons, Yussef and Ahmed, and sends them out to tend to the herd. Doubtful of the rifle's purported range, the two decide to test it out, aiming at rocks and highway traffic. Yussef manages to hits a bus, critically wounding an American woman who is traveling with her husband on vacation.[7] The two boys flee the scene and hide the rifle in the hills.

Glimpses of television news programs reveal that the US government considers the shooting a terrorist act and is pressuring the Moroccan government to apprehend the culprits. Abdullah, who has heard about the shooting, asks the boys where the rifle is and beats the truth out of them. Finally, the three try to flee but are spotted. The police corner the father and boys on the rocky slope of a hill and open fire. After Ahmed is hit in the leg, Yussef returns fire, striking one police officer in the shoulder. The police continue shooting, hitting Ahmed in the back, severely injuring him. Yussef then surrenders, admitting responsibility for shooting the American and asking for medical assistance; the police are shocked to realize they were shooting at children.

Richard/Susan

Richard and Susan are an American couple who came on vacation to Morocco. Their infant son Sam recently died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, putting a strain on their relationship.[8] When Susan is shot on a tour bus, Richard orders the bus driver to the nearest village, Tazarine. The other tourists wait for some time, but they eventually demand to leave, fearing the heat and that they may be the target of further attacks. Richard tells the tour group to wait for the ambulance, which never arrives, and eventually the bus leaves without them. The couple stays behind with the bus's tour guide, still waiting for transport to a hospital. A helicopter arrives and carries Richard and Susan to a hospital in Casablanca, where she is expected to recover.

United States/Mexico

Richard and Susan's Mexican nanny, Amelia, tends to their children, Debbie and Mike, in their San Diego, California home. When Amelia learns of Susan's injury, she worries that she will miss her son's wedding. Unable to secure any other help, she calls Richard, who tells her to stay with the children. Without his permission, Amelia decides to take them with her to the wedding in a rural community near Tijuana, Mexico. Rather than staying the night at the party, Amelia drives back to the States with her nephew, Santiago. He has been drinking heavily and the border guards become suspicious of him and the American children in the car. Amelia has passports for all of them, but no letter of consent from the children's parents allowing her to take them out of the United States. Under pressure, Santiago speeds away in a drunken panic and abandons Amelia and the children in the desert, whereupon awakening in the morning they soon begin to suffer from heat exhaustion.

Amelia leaves the children behind to find help, ordering them not to move. She eventually finds a Border Patrol officer, who places her under arrest. They travel back to where she left the children, but they are not there. Amelia is taken back to a Border Patrol station, where she is eventually informed that the children have been found and that Richard, while outraged, has agreed not to press charges. However, she will be deported from the US where she has been working illegally. At the border, a tearful Amelia is greeted by her newlywed son.

Japan

Chieko Wataya (綿谷 千恵子 Wataya Chieko) is a rebellious teenage girl who is deaf and non-verbal. She is also self-conscious and unhappy because of her deafness. While out with friends, she finds a teenage boy attractive, and following an unsuccessful attempt at socializing, exposes herself to him under a table. At a dental appointment, she tries to kiss the dentist, who sends her away. Chieko encounters two police detectives who question her about her father, Yasujiro. She invites one of the detectives, Kenji Mamiya (真宮 賢治 Mamiya Kenji), back to the high-rise apartment that she shares with her father. Incorrectly assuming that the detectives are investigating her father's involvement in her mother's suicide, she explains to Mamiya that her father was asleep when her mother jumped off the balcony and that she witnessed this herself. The detectives are actually investigating a hunting trip Yasujiro took in Morocco. Soon after learning this, Chieko approaches Mamiya nude and attempts to seduce him. He resists her approaches but comforts her as she bursts into tears.

Leaving the apartment, Mamiya crosses paths with Yasujiro and questions him about the rifle. Yasujiro explains that there was no black market involvement; he gave his rifle as a gift to Hassan, his hunting guide on a trip in Morocco. About to depart, Mamiya offers condolences for the wife's suicide. Yasujiro, however, is confused by the mention of a balcony and angrily replies that his wife shot herself, and that Chieko was the first to discover her. As Mamiya sits in a restaurant, watching news of Susan's recovery, Yasujiro comforts his daughter with a hug as she stands at their balcony in mourning.