High Impact Topics
If there is something that has always stood out in the work of Alejandro González Iñárritu, it is his themes. In an industry that increasingly points to external conflict, the Mexican always opts for the internal one, boosted, yes, by all kinds of frustrations from the complex world in which we live. This is what he did with his Trilogy of Pain, focused on the torments of an existence that he does not understand of reasons in the face of the tragic coincidence of an accident, an implant or a shot in the air.
This is how he became a director who enjoys facing the character with his destiny. Like when the protagonist of Biutuful must decide what to do with the short time to live or the Birdman if you embrace that double identity that persecutes you and eats away at you, but at the same time seduces you with its freedoms. Not even The Revenant escapes the line: it is the most external conflict of his work, with a man who must face the elements to survive, but without neglecting the emotions after an existence shaken by human evil.
Bardo, a false chronicle of a few truths, remains in line with a story of inverted migration that is rare in national cinema. A journalist who returns to the country that was once his home only to discover how much it and the people in it have changed. Or is he the one who did it? The answer does not matter, since the impact between expectation and reality will leave an identity crisis that becomes increasingly common in a globalized world in which it is increasingly difficult to generate feelings of belonging. Or as he himself said: “all the time we die and are reborn. For me, to emigrate is to die a little. It implies somehow accepting the end of something, and being reborn again and reinventing yourself. This integration into a new culture also implies the disintegration of the previous one,” he reported. The country .
Mexican alliances
It’s not just the director. Every film production has key elements that are decisive depending on the characteristics of each project. In the work of Alejandro González Iñárritu, some of these positions of honor have been occupied by Mexicans with whom the filmmaker has established fruitful alliances. The first name that springs to mind is, without a doubt, Guillermo Arriaga, who served as screenwriter for the award-winning “Trilogy of Pain” made up of loves dogs, 21 grams Y Babel. An extremely fruitful relationship that ended up breaking down when “some magazines began to say that this man was the director of my writings and that infuriated him.”
Years later, he collaborated with another Mexican who was key in his narrative intentions: the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, better known worldwide by his nickname “El Chivo”. collaborated on Birdman, but The Revenant marked the peak of the alliance with a naturalistic photography that was praised like few others. Their last work together, at least for now, was the short meat and sand.