Babel
I had inadvertently read a good deal of press about Babel and of course made my own assumptions about the film based on the title. What I did not expect Babel to actually be was a slow-building, much more effective version of Crash. The film begins with three seemingly unrelated stories, filled with flavor and small but useful scenes, filling the storylines with flavor. With one offhand decision, the three stories are tied intimately together as one new one, seemingly completely unrelated, joins the mix. Simple circumstances balloon quickly (but, pacing-wise, languorously) into onerous catastrophes. These scenes (playing out in Mexico, Japan, Morocco) spool out filled with tension - oh god, what’s going to happen now? In such desperate and painful moments born out of such everyday occurrences, they thrum at your mind and heart.
The film is less an allegory for the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, where our tongues were confused and we grew apart when we could not talk to each other, and perhaps more about the intense interconnectedness of us all, despite language and geographical barriers. Assumptions balloon into misunderstandings, but the translator generally keeps us all on track. The people in this tale are tied together more by coincidence and consequence, but they form the tapestry of this movie in a truly artful way. The Japanese storyline is fascinating in its own right, and has the most unanswered questions, and the most tenuous connection to the other 3, but it is hard to fault the film for showcasing Rinko Kikuchi’s performance.
All of the performances are stellar - there’s not a weak link in the bunch, regardless of language, age, fame, whatever. Communication moves things forward, but it the characters’ darkest moments when they are left not knowing what will happen next that make the movie breathe with life. The photography is as ambitious as the script.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (best known for 21 Grams and Amores Perros) previously wowed me with his 11 minute, 9 second, and 1 frame length segment in 11.9.01 - September 11. He is a director
of intensity and sensitivity in a field where generally one must favor one of the other. I felt this movie was more cohesive than 21 Grams, even while playing on a wider playing field. It seems that he directed the separate segments with a definite desire to reduce the emotional separation of the different locations - to make them feel
like they are one movie and not four.
Babel is not a movie for everyone. It developed and moved with a purposeful slowness which I found effective for evoking sympathy, but it tried my companion’s patience. It is a movie about everyone, even if you don’t see yourself in any of the characters, you see humanity, of which we all are a part, despite our different worlds, languages, and priorities. It doesn’t excite discussion so much as give you an appreciation of how the smallest act can deeply affect a great number of people.
MPAA Rating R-violence, nudity, language, drug use
Release date 10/27/06
Time in minutes 142
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu
Studio Paramount Vintage
