"The heart has its reasons that the mind will never understand".
                                   – Blaise Pascal, mathematician, philosopher

The stunning mosaic-like film 21 GRAMS has been called a jig saw puzzle. Director Alejandro Gonzeález Iñárritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga's entangling dark work unfolds through interlocking stories of three couples; honestly done, impassioned, and inevitable. 

21 Grams has little to do with hopping back and forth in time with carefully delineated jump cuts. The cinematic ingenuity and integrity of the film breaks expectations with a logic all its own. Time flows through flawed character relationships, like a series of X rays reflecting parallel emotional states. 

In spite of my initial resistance, the film pulled me into it like a heart attack. 21 grams is roughly the weight we lose when we die. I lost 15 grams just watching the film. So maybe I'll get credit for that. 

Sean Penn is Paul, a math professor with a bad heart, who needs a transplant to survive. No algebra equation will get him out of it. Getting a heart transplant leads to the inciting incident of the film. It is also an apt, viable metaphor with redemptive power.     

Paul distances himself from his wife Mary, portrayed with a sense of desperation and lost horizons by Charlotte Gainsbourg. Mary wants a baby to fill in the empty spaces, and in spite of Paul's misgivings, he consents to artificial insemination. At the doctor's office he masturbates into a tube while watching sex on TV; bored and trivialized. He doesn't want to be there because he doesn't want Mary to be the mother of his child.  

In the second, contrasting story, Jack (Benicio del Toro), an ex-con and now a born again, walks a tight rope in an atmosphere of sorrowful healing through his new found faith in Jesus. It is the condition and acceptance of love that Jack is after. His wife Marianne (Melissa Leo) keeps him intact. She is protective, caring, loving. And his young daughter touches him deeply. 

With heavily made up, clown-like bags under his eyes, and an intensely whispered, struggling talk, del Toro is totally immersed in character. Jack is a man pulling himself up by his spiritual bootstraps; on the brink of renewal through hard won self knowledge.  Jesus may be his savior but it is Jack that does the working out. It may be del Toro's best performance yet.

When Jack kills a father and two children, while speeding down a suburban street in his beat up truck, he runs. And then, later, tells his wife he wants to turn himself in – another side of his dream of redemption. Mary will have none of it. Instead she wipes the blood off the truck to protect him and their daughter from disaster. 

Nothing is completely an accident in 21 Grams. The interlocking X rays pass through each other in a shuffle of perspectives and a blending of realities. 

In the third, central story, Christina Peck (Naomi Watts), the wife and mother of the husband and two daughters who died in the hit and run calamity, descends from happiness and light to overwhelming darkness. We witness her disbelief at the news of the accident. We see her desperately absorbing at arm's length the announcement of the deaths of her family at the hospital. Confronted by a doctor quietly asking if she will donate her husband's heart to save another person's life, Christina implodes; like the moon into darkness when the light goes out. . 

Paul receives her husband's heart transplant. He wants to know the name of the person who saved his life. Since it is unlawful to reveal that person's name, he tracks Christina down to find a way to express his gratitude. Watching from a distance her deepening isolation and despair, he intervenes; carefully arranging a casual meeting. Winning her over with respect and sensitivity, he falls in love. Christina revives inch by inch. When Paul breaks the news that he carries her husband's heart, she explodes. Watts portrays Christina with consuming, quenched pain, and powerfully realized creative choices; true to character, sympathetic, and resonant.    

Paul is told that the implanted heart is failing. He needs another transplant to survive. He refuses to go through it again. The connection with Christina's dilemma is seminal. When the heart has been turned over, it no longer accepts another self.

Paul seeks revenge for the damage done to Christine by hunting down Jack with a gun.. The intensity between Penn and de Toro is reminiscent of "Mystic River" when Penn as Jack Markham faced down Tim Robbins as Dave Boyle. In that film Markham kills Boyle. The man whom he thought was the child molester, but tragically was not. In 21 grams the better instincts prevail.

In 21 grams Paul takes the parallel choice: from violence into compassion and the road to self recognition. Paul reconciles with Christine through the mutual understanding of shared pain and the need for each other.  

Yes, Paul dies. The transplanted heart gives up. All the lessons have been learned. But the spirit remains. It is truly a spiritual picture show achingly received. One of the best ensemble acting triumphs around. 

The heart has its reasons which the mind eventually understands.  

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