Alejandro González Iñárritu

Film director, producer, screenwriter

• Born: August 15, 1963
• Place of Birth: Place of birth: Mexico City, Mexico

Significance: Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director, producer, and screenwriter who has directed such acclaimed films as Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Revenant (2015). Iñárritu won back-to-back Academy Awards for best director for these two films.

Background

Alejandro González Iñárritu was born on August 15, 1963, in Mexico City, Mexico, to Hector González Gama and Luz Maria Iñárritu. Hector was a wealthy banker whose work allowed the family to live in Mexico City's affluent Las Aguilas neighborhood.

Iñárritu became interested in entertainment and show business in his youth. In 1984, he started working as a disc jockey for the Mexican radio station WMF. Then, with a growing interest in professional filmmaking, Iñárritu traveled to the United States to study drama with Polish director Ludwik Margules and directing with filmmaking instructor Judith Weston.

Iñárritu then returned to Mexico and became head of production at the television network Televisa. He subsequently started directing television commercials and composing scores for Mexican films. In 1991, he founded his own film production company, Zeta Films, which would produce short films and television shows. In 1995, Iñárritu directed the short television film Detrás del dinero.

Life's Work

Iñárritu had been introduced to screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga when he entered the Mexican television industry in the late 1980s. The pair soon discovered they worked well together as friends and filmmakers, and they started planning a collaborative film project. Iñárritu initially intended to direct eleven short films about the varied, contradictory nature of life in Mexico City. He eventually reduced the number of stories to three and expanded them into a feature film, with himself producing and directing and Arriaga providing the script.

The result was Amores Perros, released in 2000. Focusing on themes such as love, violence, and human nature, the drama depicts three separate stories that become interwoven by one car accident in Mexico City. Critics praised Amores Perros, and the film earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film.

Iñárritu's newfound international fame led him to the United States to direct the drama 21 Grams, starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro. With Arriaga again writing the script, the film featured a similar structure to that of Amores Perros in that it showed how multiple story lines become interconnected by a car accident. 21 Grams earned mostly positive reviews, with critics lauding the film's take on life and death.

In 2006, Iñárritu directed Babel, starring an international cast that included Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Rinko Kikuchi. Written by Arriaga and Iñárritu, the film served as the third entry of an informal trilogy that began with Amores Perros and continued with 21 Grams. Like its two predecessors, Babel depicted multiple stories occurring at different times and in different countries. The primary theme linking all of the stories was the relationship of parents to their children. Babel was highly praised and later won a Golden Globe for best drama, while Iñárritu was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for best director.

After directing several short documentary films over the next few years, Iñárritu returned to feature directing with the 2010 film Biutiful. The Spanish-language drama starred Javier Bardem as a Barcelona man diagnosed with terminal cancer who must manage his relationships with his children and ex-wife before his death.

In 2014, Iñárritu directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the black comedy–drama Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, and Emma Stone. The film focused on aging actor Riggan Thomson, played by Keaton, who suffers from hallucinations of the superhero character Birdman that he played as a younger man. Birdman received overwhelming critical acclaim upon release, and Iñárritu won an Oscar for best director and shared the Academy Awards for best picture and best original screenplay with his collaborators.

Iñárritu next directed, co-wrote, and co-produced the historical epic survival film The Revenant, released in 2015. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the film tells the story of early nineteenth-century American fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass, who is mauled by a bear and left for dead by one of his men in the winter wilderness of the American Midwest. Glass survives his injuries and sets out to take revenge on the man who betrayed him.

The Revenant generated international news after its release for the difficult conditions under which it was filmed. The film was shot over seven months in the wilderness of Alberta, Canada, where the winter temperatures sometimes reached forty degrees below zero. The shoot was made more complex by Iñárritu's desire to film using only natural lighting. The Revenant earned widespread critical praise, with much attention given to the film's acting and cinematography. It was eventually nominated for numerous Academy Awards; Iñárritu won the Oscar for best director, while DiCaprio won for best actor.

Iñárritu then created the television drama series The One Percent for the Starz network. The show—which Iñárritu would produce, write, and direct—was to focus on a farmer who struggles to save his farm from financial ruin. The One Percent premiered in 2017. Iñárritu followed The One Percent with his third Spanish-language film, Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). The film won a Golden Lion and was later distributed by the popular streaming service Netflix.

Impact

Iñárritu became the first Mexican director—and the third director in history—to win consecutive Oscars, in 2015 and 2016. His first several films featured innovative narrative techniques that used disjointed, nonlinear stories to convey universal messages, while later efforts such as Biutiful and The Revenant featured intense examinations of human nature, life, and death.

Personal Life

Iñárritu lived in Los Angeles with his wife, Maria Eladia Hagerman de González, and their two children.

Bibliography

""Alejandro González Iñárritu." Internet Movie Database, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0327944/. Accessed 29 Sept. 2024.

"Alejandro González Iñárritu Biography." Fandango. Fandango. Web. 6 June 2016.

"Alejandro González Iñárritu Biography." Tribute. Tribute Entertainment Media Group. Web. 6 June 2016.

Andreeva, Nellie. "Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's 'One Percent' Gets Series Order at Starz." Deadline. Penske Business Media, LLC, 12 Aug. 2014. Web. 6 June 2016.

Berumen, Frank Javier Garcia. Latino Image Makers in Hollywood: Performers, Filmmakers, and Films Since the 1960s. JefferSon: McFarland & Company, 2014, 305–306. Print.

Fleishman, Jeffrey. "'The Revenant's' Mexican Director and Cinematographer Make History with Consecutive Oscar Wins." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 29 Feb. 2016. Web. 6 June 2016.

Setoodeh, Ramin. "Leonardo DiCaprio, Alejandro G. Inarritu Open Up about 'The Revenant's' Brutal Shoot." Variety. Variety Media, LLC, 15 Dec. 2015. Web. 6 June 2016.