A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
In the year 2000, a Mexican film took the Cannes Film Festival by storm.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DE PERROS AMORES")
CONTROL MACHETE: (Rapping in Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ: Its plot involved Mexico City and a fatal car crash where three lives collide - oh, and dogs. Lots of dogs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DE PERROS AMORES")
CONTROL MACHETE: (Rapping in Spanish).
MARTÍNEZ: The film is called "Amores Perros," or "Love's A B****," and it altered the landscape of Spanish-language films as we knew them.
GAEL GARCIA BERNAL: It was a new geography in cinema. Of course, Mexico has existed for many, many years, but in cinema, we hadn't seen it that much, and we hadn't heard ourselves in our own language. So that's why also in Latin America, "Amores Perros" had such a huge kind of, like, thorough transcendence.
MARTÍNEZ: That is Golden Globe-winning actor and filmmaker Gael Garcia Bernal. "Amores Perros" was his and now two-time Academy Award-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's first film. And 25 years after its best foreign language film Oscar nomination, it is back in theaters. I recently spoke with the pair about the film's lasting legacy. Here is Garcia Bernal on the early days of this project.
GARCIA BERNAL: It was perhaps the darkest moment of cinema in Latin America, industrially speaking also, no? It was very, very complicated that this film's - would be seen. And so when I was approached by Alejandro to - you know, to put - you know, would you mind putting yourself on tape, and I'll send you the script? And it all sounded very - yeah. Like, of course.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
GARCIA BERNAL: I don't know. Yeah. You know, like, there is no - there wasn't anything I could compare it to or any - you know, I was also 19. So I was like, yeah, OK. Great. Sounds like a great invitation. And thinking that this was the one film only in my life, you know?
MARTÍNEZ: No kidding. You really thought - wow.
GARCIA BERNAL: I mean, if I got it, if I got the part, it was going to be the only film I was ever going to do because that's how it was. And thinking also, like, OK, I should make sure that I get a VHS copy if the film gets finished also. If the film gets finished, I need a VHS copy to show to my family.
MARTÍNEZ: When you were making it, who were you making it for?
ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU: For people like me, like, young people - like, young. I mean, I was just saying to Gael that I was very impressed when we saw it last year in Cannes that it still - the film holds and has a lot of muscle. And it's very impressive that the dogs are still barking 25 years later (laughter). And the fans, the people that is more connected, are 16- to 25-year-old kids. I think that is because these characters are broken, all of them, and they are looking for love. That's what the film is about. And I think that's how the - a lot of young people feel today. And when we did that film, we were feeling that way, too, and we were young. And I think we were doing it for us.
MARTÍNEZ: When you were making it, did you know? Did you have a feeling, even, that you were making something that was going to last a long time?
GARCIA BERNAL: No. No. Back in those days, the crazy opportunity of making a film, I didn't know what it meant. It took me another couple of films afterwards to finally get it together and say, of course, cinema is an exercise of transcendence. And when a film is good, when a film reaches that - which only time can tell, no? - when that happens, well, yeah, the film lives forever. Like Alejandro says, the dogs keep on barking. And I cannot understand or see definitely my life but definitely also Mexico or the cinema world without "Amores Perros."
MARTÍNEZ: Now, Alejandro, the film came out in 2000, and really for - I think for a lot of people, it is a marker of time, a marker of what Mexico and Mexico City was at the turn of the century. How is the country, the city similar or different than when you made this?
INARRITU: I think it's very different and very similar in many ways, you know? I think the role of the woman, the role of the man, the fatherless figure, the power games, the social classes clashing, I think the textures and that sound of Mexico, that texture of Mexico, the rawness or the primal beauty of Mexico - it's an animal that is savage and is lovely and is loyal but is - it can kill you. I think all those feelings are still in Mexico City. It's still relevant because of that.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, I have one last question for both of you, and it's because of the end of the film. Because it ends on a dedication that's really, I think for a lot of people, taken on a life of its own. It reads (speaking Spanish) - translated, because we are also what we have lost. So I'm wondering what that means to each of you. Gael, let's start with you on that.
GARCIA BERNAL: Well, I - when I read it for the first time, it was at the ending of the film in Cannes when we - the premiere was. And that dedication is Alejandro's, and it is - it resonates. It resonates in many ways. And I guess at that point, I was just, you know, kind of - it was one of the phrases that also gave sense to the meaning or the mystery of what I had just seen.
MARTÍNEZ: Alejandro, what about you?
INARRITU: It's a dedication for - basically, it's for my family. I think because three years before I shot the movie and four years when it was released, my wife and I lost our second kid. So we were struggling still with that loss. And I think without that, I will have never been a director. I think the loss of our son really transformed our lives, and I dedicate that film for him. And more than for him, it was for my family because I thought that, you know, still he was with us. And we are what we lose. It's a real thing. I mean, when we lose our parents or things, it's - we are still that. We are part of what we have lost, you know? We are made of what we are, and what we have lost is still part of the existence. So yeah, that's the meaning of that.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Gael Garcia Bernal. "Amores Perros" is now playing in theaters. Alejandro, Gael, thank you, first of all, for the film 26 years later, and thank you for giving me some time.
INARRITU: Thank you.
GARCIA BERNAL: Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DE PERROS AMORES")
ELY GUERRA: (Singing in Spanish). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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