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Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2000 Oscars, Amores Perros is the month's most highly acclaimed new release. It also carries the strongest precautions. The movie, a debut for Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, tells three stories. The first is about sibling rivalry, marital abuse, and a dogfighting ring; the second, about a married man who has an affair with a supermodel; and the third, about a killer-for-hire driven to realize what a monster he has become. All three stories are powerful tales about the wages of sin. But most critics are cautioning audiences that the first and the third story include grisly scenes of bloodied, injured, and dead animals. If you are a dog-lover, be warned.

At Christian Answers, Jim O'Neill sees the dueling dogs as "a metaphor of the savagery that dominates modern culture. These bloody games take place in decayed buildings and in abandoned swimming pools, once images of modern cultural dreams." Despite some weaknesses, he says, "Amores Perros is a cinematic tour de force and a chilling cautionary tale of the price that must be paid for excess. There is no overt Christian message here, but the warning that no sin goes unpunished is inescapable."

The film provoked comments from Nick Alexander, a contributor to the eGroups OnFilm discussion. He admits, "this film is not for everyone," but adds, "There's an ethical payoff to each of the sins committed in the film. I found the movie wonderfully profamily, prolife, and antiviolence. I would dare say that this film asks the same questions as [Krzysztof Kieslowski's] The Decalogue, though in a Pulp Fiction-esque storyline." Alexander's sense that Amores Perros presents a world where morality matters is also echoed by Roger Ebert in his Chicago Sun-Times review: "[Iñárritu's] characters are not the bland, amoral totems of so much modern Hollywood violence, but people with feelings and motives. They want love, money and revenge. They not only love their dogs but desperately depend on them. And it is clear that the lower classes are better at survival than the wealthy, whose confidence comes from their possessions, not their mettle."

While the human beings treat each other with shocking insensitivity and malice throughout the film, audiences seem more distressed by suffering canines. When I attended the film, some viewers left during the first act and did not return. It made me wonder—why could viewers (including me) watch the cruelty between the human characters without blinking, yet we turned away when dogs bit each other? Has moviegoing numbed us to the sight of human suffering? If nothing else, the film alerts me to my failing sensitivity by showing me how I react to a sort of violence I am not accustomed to seeing in newspapers, television crime dramas, and movies. Indeed, I once reacted similarly even to the sight of a gun in the hand of a villain. (I explore this question further in my own Looking Closer review.)

While art can portray violence in responsible and important ways, viewers (and I'm preaching to myself here) should be careful to think seriously about the severity of human evil when it is presented either in art or in any other form. Excessive exposure to violence may well harden even compassionate hearts. And yet, while I cannot recommend this movie to most viewers due to its harshness, I also cannot condemn it. Stories told as passionately as these can be strong medicine, reminding viewers of where the smallest sins, even well-intended, can lead.

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April (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45