60 years, an important milestone reached today Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Among the most important international authors, together with Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, he represents the golden age of the Mexican movement: filmography, palmar and records speak for themselves.
A brilliant provocateur, Iñárritu deftly moves between arthouse cinema and mainstream opera in his unique style, enhancing his actors and offering the viewer a layered work. The first Mexican director to receive a Best Director nomination at the Oscars and from the Directors Guild of America, the director from Mexico City became the second to receive the award after Alfonso Cuarón and the first to win two consecutive awards. Thanks to the anniversary, let’s go and open it Top 5 films.
21 grams (2003)
Second work after the amazing “Amores perros”, “21 grams” Iñárritu’s first American film. The second work of the so-called Trilogy of Death, it is an ambitious melodrama that mixes time plans with clairvoyance, a testament to the extraordinary talent of mosaic storytelling. The name refers to the hypothetical weight one would lose by drawing one’s last breath, like the weight of the soul, often associated with a feather. It stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Babylon (2006)
The third and final film in the death trilogy.Babylon“is an international tribute to Iñárritu, awarded for the best director at the Cannes Film Festival. Here, too, the Mexican director tells the viewer about four different and distant realities – a Moroccan family, an American, a Mexican guardian and a Japanese father and daughter – are connected by a very thin thread. Fate, coincidences, loneliness and pain are the themes behind this intertwined drama that garnered seven Oscar nominations, winning the best soundtrack statuette.
Birdman or (The Unpredictable Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
“Birdman – or (The Unpredictable Power of Ignorance)” a masterpiece signed by Iñárritu. The opening film of the 71st Venice Film Festival won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Photography. Excellent cinematic work and excellent interpretation of an extraordinary technical challenge, that is, the entire film in one frame.
Survivor (2015)
Heavily underrated by critics “Survivor” not only this film allowed Leonardo DiCaprio to finally receive his first Oscar for Best Actor. Based in part on Michael Pancke’s The Survivor – The True Story of Hugh Glass and His Revenge, Iñárritu follows the life of Hugh Glass, a fur trapper who was thrown to the end of his surviving comrades in 1823 on a Missouri trading expedition. A virtuoso show with extraordinary images, signed photographs of Emmanuel Lubezki.
Bardo, a false chronicle of some truths (2022)
Presented in competition at the latest Venice Film Festival, “Bardo, a false chronicle of some truths” after a while it will be re-evaluated as one of the best films of this period. Following the whimsical adventures of Mexican documentary filmmaker Silverio Gama, Iñárritu puts his signature on a work as ambitious as it is personal, with a deeply Fellinian tinge. The protagonist Daniel Jimenez Cacho is irresistible.