Babel (HD-DVD)

When an American tourist is accidentally shot in the Moroccan desert, the events have repercussions around the world. The holidaying couple struggle to survive in a country where few speak their language. A Mexican nanny is forced to take two American children over the border illegally. Two young boys get involved in a crime they didn’t intend to commit and a deaf teenage Japanese rebel discovers her father is being sought by the Tokyo police. Circumstance ...
...of loss and isolation. Separated by culture, language and a lack of understanding of their surroundings and themselves, they all struggle to connect with the world.

Like Robert Altman before him, director Alejandro González Iñárritu is fixated on the multi-strand narrative format that links several stories through a single event. It can be a very effective storytelling tool but it can fall flat on its face. This particular example ... more

When an American tourist is accidentally shot in the Moroccan desert, the events have repercussions around the world. The holidaying couple struggle to survive in a country where few speak their language. A Mexican nanny is forced to take two American children over the border illegally. Two young boys get involved in a crime they didn’t intend to commit and a deaf teenage Japanese rebel discovers her father is being sought by the Tokyo police. Circumstance connects them, but they are all united in their sense of loss and isolation. Separated by culture, language and a lack of understanding of their surroundings and themselves, they all struggle to connect with the world.

Like Robert Altman before him, director Alejandro González Iñárritu is fixated on the multi-strand narrative format that links several stories through a single event. It can be a very effective storytelling tool but it can fall flat on its face. This particular example is moderately successful. The director manages to draw out a number of strong performances from a talented multinational cast. But the links between some of the storylines are tenuous at best and clumsy at worst. Trying to tell so many tales makes the film long and unwieldy and I found myself checking my watch on several occasions as we bounced from one traumatic event to another. Confusion sets in as González Iñárritu cuts back and forth between stories and to and fro along the timeline, tying the plot strands together but distorting the viewer’s sense of time and inter-connectivity. I suppose this could be intentional as it mirrors the sense of disconnection and confusion experienced by the majority of the characters. But it makes it very difficult to follow individual stories at times. And it is emotionally trying as the film weighs in at a lengthy hundred and forty-three minutes.

It’s a film that feels like hard work because it is so unremittingly bleak throughout. There are moments of tenderness and even the odd laugh, but there aren’t enough of them to counter the suggestion that we’re all the same because we constantly misunderstand each other either accidentally or on purpose. But while González Iñárritu is very good at showing the existential ties that bind everyone together, he is also adept at showing what separates us from one another. The clearest example of this is where he juxtaposes Susan’s screams of pain with the silent world in which Japanese schoolgirl Chieko lives. The director’s palette bears the bleakness out, focussing on bleached-out greys, gritty browns and sterile whites. It means there isn’t a great deal of warmth (visual or emotional) in the film, so it’s hard to become engrossed and care about the characters. The film only really springs into life in the section set in Mexico at a wedding where the director’s love for his native country shines through in a blaze of colour. It is a thorough piece of filmmaking that follows the emotional journeys of its protagonists very closely but doesn’t allow the viewer a wider overall perspective. The lives of its players aren’t interwoven strongly enough.

The screenplay by González Iñárritu’s long-time collaborator Guillermo Arriaga at times struggles to keep the links between the various subplots clear. I suppose it was inevitable as the film doesn’t really have a strong main narrative to follow, more a theme of miscommunication (hence the title). Consequently the film feels episodic and come the end of the movie, attempts to tie all the plot strands together feel contrived. This is particularly true of the Japanese section of the story, which is possibly the most engaging in emotional terms but the least coherent addition to the central narrative. So it feels like a short film that’s been tacked on, whose purpose is to do nothing more than pad the length. Characterisation is problematic because you’re dealing with five plot lines and twenty main characters. So you only see the players in snapshot and usually only in times of stress. Therefore some don’t feel three-dimensional and their relationships can feel like ciphers for mutual misunderstanding and unnecessary disharmony. The only thing that unites all the characters is that they’re having a REALLY bad day. The dialogue often feels like it’s trying to be too emotionally loaded without having enough content, so there is an excess of meaningful silences.

You can see Brad Pitt acting his socks off as American tourist Richard. But that’s the problem; it’s a role that doesn’t come easy to him and you can see where he ends as an actor and the part begins. There’s too much technique and not enough real emotion and he has neither the experience nor the presence to convince as a man in his fifties. Cate Blanchett gives a consistent but wholly unlikeable turn as Pitt’s on-screen wife Susan. She’s brittle and needy, sharp and fragile and a bit of a bitch, to be honest. But it at least feels like she’s living the character’s trauma.

As Mexican ex-patriot housekeeper Amelia, Adriana Barraza feels like the only emotionally balanced player in the whole film and is, by default, the most likeable. She’s a caring, family-oriented woman set upon by circumstance and drawn into danger by others’ actions. As her nephew Santiago, Gael Garcia Bernal is her total antithesis; selfish, impetuous, headstrong and suspicious and very difficult to like as a result. As deaf teenager Chieko, non-hearing-impaired actress Rinko Kikuchi does a good job of representing the disability without falling into caricature. As an actress she focuses more on the sense of alienation felt by the character as a teenager and not as a deaf teenager. Like most other adolescents she is self-conscious, frustrated and desperate to be accepted and understood by those around her and this coalesces in rebellion, which is funnelled into misplaced sexual advances. Though I do wonder why thae part wasn’t played by a deaf actress.

The original music by Gustavo Santaolalla is as eclectic as the characters and scenarios it accompanies. He creates a strong sense of place with Arabic strings for Morocco and traditional-sounding mariachi style music for Mexico. It blends neatly with the use of local pop music on the soundtrack, from techno-influenced J-pop for Japan and loud Mexican pop for south of the border. But there is no unifying theme for the majority of the musical choices. Every time the composer wants the audience to feel something, he goes for mournful solo instruments such as acoustic guitar, piano or muted keyboard. It’s only once we get to the end that Santaolalla builds more complex arrangements that feature plucked strings. But it never really holds together as a body of work.

”Babel” is a very worthy movie that tests its actors and the multiple narrative format. But it didn’t have quite enough substance to draw me in and make me care for the characters. Its central theme is too vague and esoteric and the connections between various plot strands aren’t strong enough to draw them together in a coherent whole. There are a number of committed performances that are of note, but the writing never allows the characters to develop sufficiently. Though it was the subplot I enjoyed most, I think the Japanese story is least integral to the plot and the film would have been more focussed and snappier without it. The movie is overlong and too self-consciously intellectual. If you’re into deep and meaningful shoe-gazing, this could be your cup of tea, but if you’re after a multiplex crowd-pleaser, look elsewhere. 

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