Film Analysis Docket

Film: Amores Perros

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu
Writer: Guillermo Arriaga

Premise:

 Mexico City, a fatal car accident. Three lives collide,

revealing the hounding side of human nature.
 Octavio, a young teenager, decides to run away with
Susana, his brother’s wife. To raise money, he decides to
enter his dog Cofi in a dogfighting ring.
 Daniel, a 42-year old man, leaves his wife and daughters
to move in with Valeria, a model. On the day they move-in
together, Valeria is brutally run-over, putting her in a
wheelchair. Matters become worse when her dog gets
trapped under the apartment floor.
 El Chivo, a former convicted guerrilla turned hitman
lives a life of solitude until he comes upon Octavio’s
injured dog, taking care of whom, changes his
perspectives on life.
Themes:

Dogs and Disloyalty:

Each of the three tales is a reflection on the cruelty of humans
towards both animals and other humans, showing how humans may live
dark or even hideous lives. But the film's theme is loyalty, as
symbolized by the dog, "man's best friend". Dogs are important to
the main characters in each of the three stories, and in each story
various forms of human loyalty or disloyalty are shown: disloyalty
to a brother by trying to seduce the brother's wife, disloyalty to a
wife by keeping a mistress with subsequent disloyalty to the
mistress when she is injured and loses her beauty, loss of loyalty
to youthful idealism and rediscovered loyalty to a daughter as a
hit-man falls from and then attempts to regain grace.
Dogfighting is banned in most Latin American countries and exists as
an element of the underground economy in some working class
societies. Although violent, dogfighting provides an opportunity for
Octavio to make money. This is true to life in the sense that
participating in the underground economy gives people in the lower
class the ability to make money and experience mobility. González
Iñárritu was heavily criticized for his inclusion of dogfighting in
the film but has said himself that although it is horrible,
dogfighting is one of the harsh realities of Mexico City.

Inequality:
The three overlapping stories all take place in Mexico City, but
because of class division, there is severe segregation of economic
classes with El Chivo squatting on the outskirts of town, Octavio
living in a working-class neighbourhood, and Valeria living in a
luxury high-rise apartment. If not for the car accident, these three
characters would never interact. The upper class is victimized
in Amores Perros even when they are the ones perpetuating crime. For
instance, El Chivo is hired to kill a man's business partner and
eventually decides to leave both men to fight it out themselves.
Although Ramiro works at a grocery store, he also participates in
the underground economy by committing robberies. Octavio and El
Chivo participate in the underground Mexican economy as well, in
order to secure untaxed income and bring stability to their lives.

The City: + Violence

Mexico City is an anthropological experiment, and I feel I’m part of
it. I’m just one of the twenty one million people that live in the
world’s largest and most populated city. In the past, no person had
ever lived (survived, more likely) in a city with such rates of
pollution, violence and corruption, however-incredible and
paradoxical as it may seem-it is a beautiful a fascinating city and
that is precisely what Amores Perros is to me: a products of this
contradiction, a small reflection of the baroque and complex mosaic
that is Mexico City. For me, the process of Amores Perros has been a
long journey inside. From the time I read Guillermo Arriaga’s first
draft (we worked on 36 drafts over three years) it moved, shook and
disturbed me.
Plot:

The film is constructed from three distinct stories linked by a car

accident that brings the characters briefly together.
Octavio y Susana
Octavio is in love with his brother's wife Susana and dislikes the
way she is abused by his brother Ramiro. Octavio tries to persuade
her to run away with him. Local thug Jarocho, happy after winning in
a dogfight, lets his dog loose on some strays and is threatened by a
vagrant wielding a machete. Eventually, Jarocho lets his dog lose on
Octavio's rottweiler, Cofi, but his own dog is killed instead. Made
aware of this by his friend Jorge and needing money to start his new
life with Susana, Octavio decides to become involved in the
dogfighting scene. Jarocho keeps entering new dogs into the fights,
only for Cofi to kill them. Octavio makes enough money to flee with
Susana, and pays Mauricio, the owner of the dogfighting venue, to
get Ramiro beaten up. In revenge, Ramiro steals the money and leaves
with Susana. Struggling financially, Octavio accepts a challenge by
Jarocho to participate in a private dogfight, with no outside bets.
Cofi is about to win, but Jarocho shoots him. In revenge, Octavio
stabs Jarocho in the stomach. Pursued by Jarocho’s thugs, Octavio
finds himself in a car chase with Jorge and the wounded Cofi. A
collision follows; Jorge dies and Octavio is badly injured.

Daniel y Valeria
Magazine publisher Daniel leaves his family to live with his lover
Valeria , a Spanish Supermodel. On the day they move in together,
Valeria's leg is severely broken in the car accident and she is
unable to continue working as a model. One day, as Valeria is
recuperating in Daniel's apartment, her dog Richie disappears under
a broken floorboard and stays there for days. The missing dog
triggers serious tension for the couple, causing numerous fights
which lead to doubts about their relationship on both sides. Daniel
calls his estranged wife to hear her voice, suggesting that he
regrets leaving her for Valeria. Trying to rescue the dog, Valeria
reinjures her leg; Daniel finds her hours later. Valeria's new leg
injury results severely which leads it to be amputated, ending
Valeria's modelling career for good. While she is in the hospital,
Daniel rescues Richie from the floorboards. However, Valeria
realizes that her life is ruined. She quietly drives her wheelchair
through the torn-up apartment and looks out of the window expecting
to see a billboard bearing her likeness, only to find it has been
removed.

El Chivo y Maru
The vagrant occasionally seen in the previous segments is revealed
to be a professional hitman called El Chivo. Leonardo, a corrupt
police commander, recounts that El Chivo is a former private school
teacher who was imprisoned after committing terrorist acts
for guerrilla movements. When he got out, Leonardo started getting
him jobs as a hitman. El Chivo tries to make contact with his
daughter, Maru, whom he abandoned when he began his guerrilla
involvement. Following El Chivo's wishes, Maru's mother told her
that her father is dead. El Chivo is about to perform a hit on a
businessman when the car crash interrupts him. During the chaos at
the crash scene, El Chivo steals Octavio's money and takes the
wounded Cofi to his home to nurse it back to health. One day, while
El Chivo is away from his warehouse hideout, Cofi kills the other
mongrel dogs El Chivo is caring for. Despite initially preparing to
kill Cofi, El Chivo figures that the dog does not know any better
and that its violence is a reflection of his own life as a hitman.
Meanwhile, Ramiro is shot and killed by Leonardo's bodyguard during
an attempted bank robbery.
At Ramiro's funeral, a seriously injured Octavio sees Susana for the
first time since she and Ramiro fled with his money. Despite having
been wronged, Octavio tries again to convince Susana to run away
with him, but she becomes angry with the fact that Octavio is
willing to run away with her after she has just lost a loved one. A
few days later, Octavio is shown waiting at the bus station for
Susana. She never shows, and Octavio does not get onto the bus.
Still grieving for his other dogs, El Chivo learns that his client
and his intended victim are half-brothers. He leaves both men alive
and chained to separate walls with a pistol within reach between
them, their fate left undetermined. El Chivo then breaks into his
daughter's house and leaves her a large bundle of money along with a
message on her answering machine explaining what happened to him and
why the family was split. Just before El Chivo is to tell his
daughter Maru that he loves her, the answering machine stops
recording. He then goes to an autoshop, where he sells the client's
SUV. The mechanic asks him the dog's name, and El Chivo calls him
"Negro" ("Black"). After El Chivo receives the money for the car, he
and Negro walk away, disappearing into the horizon.
Protagonists:

1. Octavio
2. Valeria
3. El Chivo

Antagonists:
1. Jarocho
2. Ramiro

Side Characters:

Subplots
Structure: