Emilio Echevarria as El Chivo in “Amores Perros” (2000)
Possessing enough verve, delirium and storytelling bravado to have “New Tarantino” labels circulating days after it opened, Iñárritu’s scorching debut (and prior to “Birdman,” easily his best film) set the structure for his next two films to follow. But while “21 Grams” and “Babel” were (arguably) by turns rendered confusing and exasperating by non-linear storytelling and tenuous connections, “Amores Perros” actually derives a great deal of its internal manic energy from the format, perhaps due to Iñárritu’s comfort working in his native language and in his native city. And while a pre “Y Tu Mama Tambien” Gael Garcia Bernal is terrific too, it’s the star of another strand, Emilio Echevarria (who also appeared in Alfonso Cuaron’s film, as well as in Iñárritu’s “Babel”) who really stands out. Crazy-haired, bearded and apparently indigent, pushing a junk cart around Mexico City and eschewing human company for a pack of dogs, El Chivo could be a stock background character were it not for the care with which a fascinating backstory is revealed, piece by piece. And Echevarria really lives the role of the vagrant hitman: even under the filth, clad in rags and living in an abandoned warehouse, Chivo is a creature who wears his life’s stories, most of them tragic, like a shroud. And it’s Chivo as well who undergoes the greatest arc of change, culminating in a transformation not just spiritual but physical when, seeing his own legacy of violence mirrored in the unthinking trained cruelty of a vicious fighting dog, he finds his way toward a sort of redemption. Or if redemption doesn’t quite convey, when it’s based on stolen loot and a pretty amoral attitude toward violent death, it’s at least catharsis, summed up in a heartbreakingly one-sided conversation with his estranged daughter’s answering machine that plays out with unflinching focus as he finally breaks down. It’s a melodramatic character, but Echevarria grounds him so well that we never stop to question the credibility of what’s occurring and how he’s responding, even when his motives are momentarily unclear. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that Chivo, and Echevarria playing him, is kind of the thematic lightning rod for the film, through which its real meaning is conducted like electricity.
Rinko Kikuchi as Chieko in “Babel” (2006)
A household name in her native Japan, Rinko Kikuchi has not yet attained anything like that level of fame in the West, with her biggest chance to do so, last summer’s “Pacific Rim” feeling like such a damp squib (at least performance-wise, indignant Kaiju fans). And while she led the Japanese crossover arthouse hit “Norwegian Wood,” based on the Murakami novel, and will soon be seen adding another oddball, alienated character to her repertoire with David Zellner’s arthouse hit “Kumiko the Treasure Hunter,” the best (Oscar-nominated) showcase of her talents for an international audience is still Iñárritu’s third film, “Babel.” While the film overall suffers from a disjointed feel, as it switches continents and characters and time frames but without the same intuitive rigor that made “Amores Perros” work so well, the Japan-set segment, of which Kikuchi is the star, is in many ways the most convincing. Perhaps because it’s the strangest, or perhaps it’s because it’s the one least moored to the other two subplots and the audience is therefore free to interpret it almost as a standalone narrative, Chieko’s story is compelling in its absolutely non-judgmental portrayal of a very broken girl. Of course the showy aspect is that Kikuchi has to play deaf-mute in the film (which is all about the barriers to true interpersonal communication, after all), but her expressiveness and the physicality of her performance more than compensate for the lack of dialogue. Chieko is a teenager who has just lost her mother to suicide, and whose grief and confusion conflates with her budding sexuality and her self-consciousness because of her deafness, leading to her lash out at her father and engage in deliberately lewd and sexually provocative behavior. It’s an absolute minefield of a role, tackling teen sexuality, identity, coming of age, parental resentment and the psychological toll that disability can take, yet Kikuchi is utterly convincing and completely without artifice. In Kikuchi’s portrayal, Chieko, far from the freak she fears she might be and that her behaviour might suggest, becomes maybe the most human character in a film ostensibly concerned with understanding our shared humanity.