Amores Perros and the Film’s Violence

Amores Perros and the Film’s Violence

            Cinema is a popular cultural institution that helps to mediate a broad spectrum of social meanings, values and structures (1972). Yet depictions of violent behavior are special since it invokes some of society’s most central and guiding values. These guiding values are those which justify the use of force, elucidate the parameters of social order and isolate legitimate from illegitimate action. Put simply, the place of violence in social life lends special significance to the public discussion about violence in films. (2000)

            Film violence can be seen as an especially telling manifestation of the struggles of popular cinema to balance at any given time the forces changing society and those controlling it (2000). A broader manifestation of this struggle was the 2003 Cuban Film Festival where majority of films shared the common feature of the graphic portrayal of violence.

            Moreover, the recurrence of film violence represents not only an account of shifting cinematic standards and cultural values regarding the use of force or aggression but an element in the ongoing negotiation of the place and meaning of cinema itself in society(2000)

            Amores Perros is one of the films that run parallel to the entries in the 2003 Cuban Film Festival that depicts violence. The plot begins with a tragic car accident in Mexico City. The accident proceeds to follow its effects on the lives of three people. The first is Octavio, a teenager who turns to dog fighting in order to raise the money needed to rescue his brother’s wife from her abusive marriage. The second tale is a darkly comic affair which involves Valeria, a Spanish model and one of the actual victims of the accident. The final tale is that of El Chivo, an aging assassin and former political revolutionary who lives a Spartan life on the streets. ( 2005)

            Violence is showed in the scenes of dog fighting. There we can see a dead and bloody dogs being dragged across the floor form a dog-fighting pit leaving a trail of blood on the floor. We can also hear the sounds of dogs fighting and learns that one kills another. Violence is also showed when Chivo nearly shoot a bloody and limp dog and when he later pours gasoline onto the dead dogs and burns them. (2001)

            In addition, the number of bloody scenes including the few shoot-outs clearly demonstrates the brutality and violence in the film. Some examples of these scenes where when Chive shoots and kill the man seated in a restaurant and when he abducts a man at gunpoint and then later hold his gun on another man, kicks the second man in the crotch and hits him over the head with his gun; when Ramiro and another man rob at a store; when Octavio head-butts Ramiro, giving the latter a bloody nose; when Ramiro threatens to shoot a dog if he doesn’t get his money from Octavio; when some men abduct Ramiro and then later repeatedly kick him on the ground until he’s rather severely beaten and bloody and when two men attempt to rob a bank at gunpoint and hold their guns on others in a threatening fashion, then another man comes in, shoots one of the rubbers dead and holds his gun on the other. (2001)

            Generally, the film attempts to explore the darker side of the human condition primarily through the effective use of dogs as metaphors for the animalistic behavior in man which leads to tragedy and violence. This is also underlined in the use of violent language which at times comes to sound like a dog barking. (.)

            This is a tale in which the dogs become innocent victims in an endless cycle of violence where they are molded by their owners. Dogs are just as important in the narratives as human beings and what happens to the dogs happens to their owners in this biting and truculent film in which the primal emotions of love, betrayal, instinct, hate, pain and fury abound. It is also about the ease with which people commit acts of violence and the problems they face in finding redemption. (.)

            Inarritu uses violence cautiously yet forcefully underlining the viciousness of human nature rather than simply revealing in its effects and consequences. This is a remarkably mature approach for an emerging filmmaker and one which serves him well lending Amores Perros a thoughtful, realistic air and ensuing that it engages on a number of levels. ( 2005)

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com