Although it didn’t open commercially until March ’01, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s Amores perros began to make the rounds in the fall of 2000. Hence the 20th anniversary excitement emanating from the upcoming Criterion Bluray (12.15.20).
The Mexico City-based film had a somewhat coarse and desaturated appearance, and Criterion’s 4K digital restoration, supervised by Inarritu and dp Rodrigo Prieto, recreates this visual aesthetic. Which presents a stark contrast with the more colorful if less accurate 2017 Lionsgate Bluray.
DVD Beaver’s Gary Tooze: “Criterion [has] restored a ‘bleach-bypass process on the camera negative’ technique to attain a certain rough-hewn image. This grittier appearance is both intended and important to the film’s visual expression — an appearance that appears less crisp and almost dirty. It is also now in the correct 1.85:1 aspect ratio.”
Red Flag: Tooze writes that the Amores perros disc contains “some minor teal infiltration”…teal again! So far the Criterion teal gremlins have distorted the color palettes of three significant films — Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s Teorema (which I watched last weekend on the Criterion Channel, and the teal-tinting is both glaring and vulgar), John Schlesinger‘s Midnight Cowboy and Ron Shelton‘s Bull Durham. If Tooze is correct, Criterion’s Amores perros Bluray is the fourth.
