Buy the DVD:

Babel

Babel wants you to believe that, despite the circumstance which keeps us all apart, nothing can deny the ties that bind, sometimes forcefully so, our humanity, and the requisite suffering we must endure in order to truly appreciate and understand our purpose. Yet, after sitting for over two hours, watching a series of stories unfold which would have been better suited as stand-alone docudramas, there still isn’t a hope or greater point of view to come away with. We don’t know anything we didn’t know before – the fact that suffering is indiscriminate, but comes in different forms for different situations and countries – and we don’t feel closer to our fellow man.

Culturally, the message falls completely flat. And, unfortunately, the film shares the same grim predicament. Comparisons to Crash are inevitable, given the similar storytelling style and cast of racially, culturally, and economically assorted characters. Yet I feel more akin to link to Requiem for a Dream, and the utterly dejected mood I was in after I left. But, I wasn’t dejected because I had seen a truly horrifying line of unfortunate circumstances. No, the dejection came from being horrified at the bitter realization that I had just sat through a sermon and didn’t have a priest or Sandra Bullock to make fun of afterwards.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, tells a story of four different paths. A Mexican nanny overseeing two darling children; their parents, trying to save a rocky marriage with a trip to Morocco; a family making ends meet, who recently received a rifle in hopes of shooting stray jackals; and a Japanese deaf girl whose father-hunter’s rifle finds its way into the unfortunate hands of a young boy, who goes on to shoot an American tourist, who subsequently can’t get medical help because of American government bureaucracy, but who ends up being lucky in more ways than one, because their marriage is revitalized, and their kids are safe, but not after being dragged through the California desert by a ridiculously idiotic nanny who thinks it’s okay to drag two children across borders without legal documentation, and what happened to the Japanese deaf girl? Do you remember what I was talking about?

Being brutally honest, the plot lines are quite simple to follow (I suppose the message is designed to be more complex). But the linkage between the different lives is so ridiculous, so prefabricated and unreal, that I almost wished things were more confusing and less like a paint-by-number book to cultural understanding. The only plot point which had any sort of interesting aftereffect was the Japanese storyline, which focused on a young, deaf girl and her inability to find love due to her disability and death of her mother. Her father is the man whose rifle found its way into the hand of the boy who shot Cate Blanchett. Oh, did I mention Cate Blanchett is in this? It’s almost irrelevant, and what a shame that is. Because she’s a fine actress, who, along with Brad Pitt, the brilliant Rinko Kikuchi, and the scorchingly hot and talented Gael Garcia Bernal, unfortunately got caught in a film of confusing mediocrity.

The East-Asian storyline simply isn’t enough to make Babel worthwhile. If the film had been renamed to something like Wakannai (I don’t understand), and had cut out every scene not taking place in Tokyo, I might have really enjoyed it. But, as the film so deftly shoves in our face, we can’t ignore the parts of the world we don’t care for, whether we like it or not. The world still turns even when our heads are buried in sand. And in Babel’s case, keep them there.

Written by: Jason Villemez

Reviewers Rating: 4.5
Reader's Rating: 3.00
Reader's Votes: 1

Rate It