Amores Perros

Imagine a teenager running away from home, unable to stand his parents any longer. And he took a bus, despite not knowing where it was going.

Then imagine a hopeful young girl, aspiring to be a movie star, on her way to an audition. She was in the bus that was supposed to be her first step to stardom.

Now imagine a bus driver, who got drunk after a long quarrel with his wife but still decided to go to work and drive the bus. The bus crashed, and all three people died. Each had a dream, a hope for a better life, a longing for something. But everything they had planned, everything that had happened, everything in the hours that had passed, led them to be on that bus which was only supposed to be the meeting point but ended up being the final destination of all three.

So how do you tell stories of different individuals, happening in the same time interval? How do you connect them without one story overlapping the other, without eliminating the essentials, with a time constrain and on the same silver screen?

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu did it, and he didn’t only tell the stories well, he weaved them almost flawlessly in his 2000 film, Amores Perros. I may be a little late, well… 6 years too late, but a masterpiece is to be enjoyed and appreciated for a long time. So, does it matter?

I’m not going to write a synopsis because I don’t want to. But I’ll write the raw gist.

It revolves around the lives of a man who is madly in love with her own sister-in-law; a top model who’s also a mistress of a businessman; and an old ex-bandit who is terrified by the idea of finally meeting his own daughter. These people are totally unrelated, but each has a dream of his/her own. It’s amazing how the story of each person unfolds like a silk scarf, and the viewers don’t even realize how the people have nothing to do with each other.

And then the gruesome accident that brought all three together, the accident that proves how dreams don’t always come true, that love is not the be all and end all, and that life loves to play cruel jokes on you when you least expect it.

These people’s lives may be sad and dark, but the film is exceptionally beautiful. And, like every other great films of our time, the good finally prevails over evil.

Please watch this fantastic film if you haven’t. Trust me; your life will never be the same.