Amores Perros

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2000 anthology film, Amores Perros, is a tragic movie that centers around three different storylines and groups of characters but connects them al with a car accident scene. The movie begins with this scene but then goes through patterns of backwards and forward in time to adjust the chronological order to develop each story. The fist story that is mainly focused on is “Octavio y(and) Susana,” which is about a young man,Octavio, who is in love with his older brother’s wife, Susana. In an attempt to earn enough money to run away with her, Octavio begins fighting his dog. However, Susana betrays him, and in his anger he stabs another dogfighter and as he flees he commits the car accident. From there we are introduced to the next tragic story in which between Daniel and Valeria. Valeria, a supermodel, is in the car that Octavia crashes into as she flees and as a result she loses one of her legs. The tragedy is that Daniel had just left his wife and daughters for Valeria who has a major personality change after the accident. The third storyline is of El Chivo who is and old man who lives in poverty and mourns the fact that he cannot see his daughter. El Chivo is then hired by a man to kill the man’s half-brother and partner. However instead of killing him, he kidnaps him explaining the situation and then forces the two brothers to confront each other.
The way in which Gonzalez Inarritu uses a strayed chronological order is very effective because it creates a different order of plots as well as multiple climaxes and resolutions. The film purpose is to display how brutal people can be towards each other as well as animals. With the numerous different horrible acts displayed in the film, such as dog fighting, murder, betrayal, adultery, and theft, the viewer is given the sense of humans a dark race. Also the film displays that such acts are not restricted to particular social classes and that treachery and villainy has no relation towards financial or social status.