As far as the neo-realist tendencies, the movie was shot on location, with scenes that focused on small everyday tasks, and in addition, the movie portrays a theme of collectiveness in the way that it was shot and the division of stories according to social status. The camera work used to portray these themes were frantic and dysfunctional like the characters they conveyed. A focus on close ups of emotions, blood, and violence did not let the audience recede into the background.
In this world, the poor are not forced to behave unethically because of their circumstances and they are not necessarily trapped by their circumstances. Instead, the proletariat and bourgeoisie alike are trapped by their pettiness, their lust, and cruelty.
The entire film revolves around the interconnectedness of the three stories it tells. It explores how these stories are related on a broad scale by having them literally collide at the site of the car crash. At the same time, however, the film also highlights the disconnection of the stories in the film. For example, the recurrence of phone calls not going through seems to suggest that the stories are disconnected from one another. …. In doing so, the film seems to prompt the audience into questioning the significance of connection itself. One of the assumptions that Routledge gives about postmodernism is its denial of a common denominator, which I think in this case is the idea of connection itself.
Valeria and Richie share similarities as well. They are both the epitome of perfection, by human and dog standards, respectively. However, they both share the same downfall When Valeria gets in the car accident, her beauty and her career are ruined. She is no longer flawless; as a result, her modeling contracts are withdrawn. Similarly, when Richie falls down the hole in the apartment’s floor, his fur becomes matted and dirty; perhaps a parallel to the scars on Valeria’s legs.
Although highly stylized in structure and visual language, Amores perros is less of a Tarantino-esque depiction of coolness within crime and more of an exploration of the evberyday realities of a variety of people within Mexico City. In this way it presents an almost neo-realist view of events and moments within people’s lives, taking the time to excavate the meaning and importance that lies behind the moments themselves. While this most obviously happens with the central car crash, the technique is utilized throughout the film.
One of the several unifying themes across the varying narratives in Amores perrosis that of vision. Rather, a lack of vision; the car crash that connects the characters occurs due to the characters not paying attention, for example, while each main character in the triptych exhibits some form of blindness—Octavio is blind to how his desired future is clearly fantasy, Daniel can’t fully conceptualize Valeria’s mental state (while Valeria can’t see her dog) and el Chivo doesn’t wear his glasses. Of these characters, only el Chivo seems to overcome his blindness and make significant character growth; he recognizes the flaws in his behavior, and makes attempts to be better by not killing the men and by trying to fix his relationship with his daughter. This is visualized, subtly, through the film’s use of glass associated with him; his glasses are slightly fractured, but he can still see through them when he chooses to put them back on, for example, and the windows in his apartment are splintered and broken. Chivo says he chooses to ‘see blury’ intentionally, while the other characters seem unaware of their blindness.
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