Before I go into his story, allow me to pay hommage to the Director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Writer, Guillermo Arriaga, of this incredible movie (and a wonderful cast including personal faves Sean Penn, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Eddie Marsan (who plays the reverend)).
My personal take on just some of the many themes of this movie are destiny, crime and punishment, death, repentance, love, making good, doing the right thing, revenge, self-loathing, starting over, closure, the coincidences (serendipity?) necessary for two people to meet in this life, and the impenetrable nature of God...
The character's name is Jack Jordan, an ex-con who becomes a Born-again Christian and more than anything a deeply religious man. And although the themes mentioned above touch all of the characters in the film in one way or another as their destinies are intertwined, the role that crystalizes these 'issues' is Benicio's.
Here is the 'official' synopsis of the role:
Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) is an ex-con that has spent more time in jail than out, but has reformed and is working in a church, spreading the gospel, and helping kids that are heading toward the same kind of trouble he's been in. He and his wife have two young children.The movie does an incredible job at showing the incredible complexity of Jack Jordan as he struggles to come to terms with his life and the tragic events that happen to him despite his attempts to be a good man. Without attempting to recount the whole film, he unwittingly kills two young girls and their father in a car accident. Thereafter he cannot come to terms with the guilt, nor understand why he is being punished. He tries to commit suicide in jail and the pipe on which he tries to hang himself collapses. He is then released from jail on a technicality. Later Sean Penn intends to kill him to venge the deaths of the others and cannot go through with it. Not long after, Benicio goes to find Sean Penn and the mother of the children (played by Naomi Watts) and asks to be killed by those whose lives he hurt and it doesn't work out as expected. He even tries to take responsibility for Sean Penn's self-inflicted gunshot, admitting 'I shot him' to a sheriff, but again, he is released as the facts don't align with his story.
Having spent his years out of prison trying to atone for past behavior, through no fault of his own, he is now stuck in a bottomless well of guilt and no ability to atone. Deep conviction in God's wisdom crashes (more or less literally) into incomprehension of God's ways.
A tragic story and a tragic character, written, portrayed and directed with brio. And the brilliance was in part due to how much we come to care about and understand this character. Definitely not one of us, but at the same time one of us in the sense that the conditions of our lives are as fragile as Jack Jordan's and our (shared) incomprehension of why bad things happen to good people.
I guess more than anything the role is about the flip side of Serendipity, the negative coincidence, which I will now term derensipity.
And on that creative note, I will end this post. Be well.
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