AND THE THINGS THAT MATTER; LOVE, LIFE AND DOGS : "AMORES PERROS"

I have to admit, chances are you have seen this one. It is a masterpiece by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzales Inaritu and is cited in a lot of respectable sources as one of the best films ever made. I am not quite sure how one would qualify “the” best film ever made, but the breath-taking sequences, insightful, sensitive and yet exciting storylines and the way the characters lives clash together for one life-changing instant definitely makes it a contender in my book. Sometimes, an event is much like a pebble thrown into the water. The ripples it causes may end up hitting a distant shore and changing things the pebble or the thrower had never imagined… Here, funnily enough, it all starts with (or culminates in) a car-crash…
There are three parties to the car crash, two cars and one old homeless guy who lives with his dogs and witnesses it. In one car, there is Octavio, his beloved Rottweiler Coffee and his best friend ??. Octavio’s life is a bit of a mess, he lives with his brother, his brother’s wife and his mother in a tiny house. This in itself is a difficult situation but he is also in love with his brother’s wife – they are actually having an affair… He dreams of making enough money so they can run away with his little nephew, and Coffee is the goose that lays the golden eggs – because Octavio enters him into dog fights where Coffee is a little too good for his own good and his masters… In the other car is Valeria, a famous model. She is driving back from the new house her boyfriend has hired for her; he has left his wife for her and a wonderful new life with just him, Daniel, her and her beloved dog Richie is opening up in front of her… Or rather it was until the crash came along leaving her with potentially career-ruining scars… And then there is the old man. He lives alone with the street dogs he has rescued over the years. And as other witnesses run to save the survivors of the crash he concentrates on dragging Coffee out of the car. He takes him home and nurses him back to health. Little does he know that his new friend is going to change his entire life, dragging him back to something he should have finished 20 years ago…
This film is very, very clever. Like a lot of films of the same kind, it starts off showing snippets of various characters. It’s quite a mystery figuring out who’s who, but then again I find that kind of thing very amusing. It is told in three chapters, and although every chapter focuses on one of the stories I told above, the other stories creep in too, around the periphery… We watch the crash three different times, and as a spectator it is fascinating to gage how, us the amount of information we hold increases, the impact and importance of the crash also seems to increase… The editing is also clever, although the story cuts from one strand to another, sometimes quite dizzyingly; the cuts are all very, very cleverly done – I would go as far as saying an example to be held up for good editing.
Art imitating life or life imitating art? Hard to say really, isn’t it? One thing I do know though is that it is always touch and go when various artists try to closely copy life; I don’t mean in a Hollywood sense – they just do whatever the heck they like and expect us to just assume it’s real – but when it tries to make it really realistic… Here, it doesn’t feel like a film at all. We just watch dogs and owners (and the dogs are very much in the forefront of the story) go through life, much as if it were just a dramatic slice of life… Definitely worth your time…