Summer Homework - Film Review #2 - Mexican New Wave - Amores Perros

 Amores Perros: Alejandro González Iñárritu's hyperlinked canine triptych

 Iñárritu's incredibly assured debut film, Amores Perros - hastily translated as Love's A Bitch in English which, in all fairness, does retain the general pun of the original, despite not being a great title - is a violent, tragic and dogmatically passionate anthology of three stories revolving around interconnected people in Mexico City, centering on a devastating car crash and a very powerful dog.

The beauty of Amores Perros is that, in its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, it makes sure that everything and everyone is important; a sentiment which contrasts the disregard towards life within the film, with characters showing no compassion to their own family, or their own dogs. Mexico City is portrayed as a criminally violent dog-eat-dog world, and the biggest moments of love and compassion in the film are undermined by further context later on. That is, until the final moments of the film.

Each section has its own identity; from the action-packed, loud, and oftentimes hard-to-watch first section; to the slow-paced and reality-like minimalism of the second section; to the marriage of slow contemplativeness and heavy violence of the third section. And each section revisits the central car crash from a different perspective. Whilst none of the main characters have any relationship with each other, they all have a significant part of their lives changed at the accident. These characters lose what they had become to depend on to make money, whether it be their dogfighting dogs or their leg or, well, their life. By playing with time like that, and revisiting the same event with new contexts each time, Iñárritu can explore the fatalistic outcomes and butterfly effects of all the characters' actions and motivations.

Amores Perros manages to occupy itself with violent crimes and cruel dogfighting, without glorifying any of it. In fact the film had a role in decriminalising the act of dogfighting in Mexico, albeit not for nearly twenty years. No dogs were harmed in this film. Now that's impressive, given how realistic these dead and dying attacked dogs appear. They are sacrificed for money in an increasingly inequality-filled city where money is never reliable or secure. Except for section 2's wealthy supermodel's family, who carelessly lose their dog down a hole in their floor, symbolising the world below which they can afford to overlook. 

In that regard, the dogs' typical connotations of loyalty is shown to not be reciprocated by their human owners which leads them into tragedy. And the car crash represents the inability for such inequality to exist without causing destruction for everyone involved, increased by the exploitation of the poor by both the rich and the fellow poor, as everyone only thinks of their own needs. 

Besides each section's individual tone, made clear by a change in pace, music, and general level of action, the film has a consistent organic quality to its camerawork, in its almost verite-esque shaky realness. This drives home the point that everything horrible in the film also goes on in real life in Mexico, and also allows a very human connection, whether positive or negative, to be formed with the characters. Besides the flashy bank robbery violence, there is also domestic violence, with Iñárritu balancing his views on the human condition in both a broad systemic sense and on a individual level. The character of Susana is a clear example of someone subjected to the systemic poverty of Mexico City, where her husband and brother-in-law make their money either in underpaid jobs or illegally, and to the domestic abuse from her husband which traps her in the role of an emotionally dependent housewife. This is made worse by her brother-in-law who, when "helping" her, takes advantage of her sexually and fails to understand her needs.

Given the nature of hyperlink cinema, every character is, inadvertently, beholden to the consequences of each other's actions and, just as these dogs have little to no free will and are pitted against each other, Iñárritu shows us that so are the humans. He takes such ideas out of metaphysical natters on the state of free will, and applies them to real life, and ends up creating a film that is so powerful in its message that it helped change legislation and make the world a better place for dogs and humans alike.