Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Irresistible Death: 21 Grams as Melodrama

2007; University of Texas Press; Volume: 47; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cj.2007.0051

1527-2087

Michael Stewart,

Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez

Abstract: This essay applies theories of film melodrama to Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams. It argues that the film presents a turn, progressively, away from the garishness, irony, and hysteria of Sirkian melodrama, as well as the utopian sentiment of various women's and/or rites of passage films, toward nihilism, the abject, and what Jeffrey Sconce calls "cold melodrama."