Written by
Guillermo Arriaga (+ idea), Alejandro González Iñárritu (idea)
Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza, Gael García Bernal, Rinko Kikuchi, Kôji Yakusho
Genre: Drama / Thriller
Country: USA / Mexico
Runtime: 142 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated 14A (mature theme).

Evaluation: 7.5/10
by Greg Ferguson







Desperately auteurish credit-hog Alejandro González Iñárritu is certainly a reacher. With his would-be epic moral bulldozer Babel, both geographically sprawling and multi-language-spouting, he is like a small kid trying to reach his arms around something a little too wide to see if his fingers can touch, only here the thing being clasped isn't some jolly big object but the voluminously metaphysical notions of filial responsibility, geopolitical harmony and authentic human communication, and the confusion generated by our variegated responses to them. For a brief moment Iñárritu does it, wrapping his arms around the whole damn thing, but he ultimately buckles under the unnatural amount of pressure thus created. Ideologically, his grasp is tenuous and fleeting, yet Babel is not entirely disappointing. Its well-intentioned vision is commendable, and it's especially interesting how a confusing film about a challenging world populated by confused people can be rescued by that world's beautiful vistas and its earnest and emotionally rich characters.

Modelled of course on the Biblical fable of the Tower of Babel, in which the people of the world attempt to build a tower climbing toward God's heavenly realm but are instead stricken with a vast array of languages to confound their efforts to unite, Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga conceived a contemporary update, perhaps simply aiming to confirm that humanity has not made many strides since the time recounted in Genesis. Fashioned as an episodic tour of grief perpetuated by the poor choices of present-day people in Japan, Morocco, Mexico and the USA, Babel's unlikely commingling of its four stories is a highly contrived premise ripped from the pages of a morality play but made halfway enthralling thanks to the non-linear, jigsaw editing as well a gallery of fine performances. Intermittently we're given two trigger-happy Moroccan boys anxious to see whether their father's new rifle can really shoot as far away as 3km; a married American couple vacationing in a village a little too close to them; their unblemished and socially advantaged kids back home accompanying their illegal immigrant caregiver to a wedding in Mexico; and, finally, a deaf Japanese schoolgirl frustrated with the way boys sexually dismiss her because she is different. As each thread unfolds, intersecting with the others, a level of dread builds, threatening greater and greater calamities that will subsume everyone either on-screen or beyond the film in our imaginations.

Any forward momentum sustained is hijacked midstream, however, as Babel unfortunately meanders into a diffuse and resolutely flat statement on our modern-day follies. Little remained enduringly insightful or altogether meaningful - not even the subtext of White Privilege that permeates the film's pivotal "international incident" and trickles down from the claustrophobic Moroccan dwelling where a critically-shot Susan (Cate Blanchett) lays on the brink of death to the vast desert fields on the American side of the Mexico border where her children are abandoned by a dehydrated and delirious Amelia (Adriana Barazza), inconspicuously and needlessly destroying the lives of several brown people in the process. In fact, the importance placed upon this incident drives a mortal wedge between its parent plot and the Japanese aspect of the story, which seems to exist on another planet altogether but for a ridiculous groaner of a connection. That's a shame, too, because its tender drama elicited the most empathy from me. To think that the world news agencies translate Susan's dire plight for all to hear while the lovely and unfairly lonely Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi, a promising young actress blessed with vulnerability and bravery) is condemned to suffer silently is deeply unsettling. This is a point not lost on Iñárritu as he drops hints to this effect elsewhere in the picture (e.g., Amelia asking the police about her employers' children and being chastised with "That's none of your business," though it's suggested that she's been as involved in their lives, if not more, than their parents). Sadly, not much is done to direct these feelings and moral imperatives into anything coherent or consistent. Babel is just as uncomfortably chaotic as the world it depicts.

Pockets of fabulous filmmaking happily still speckle the broad terrain that the film attempts to cover. I admired the way cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, for instance, photographs the urban landscapes adorned with looming skyscrapers, indicating our continued collective will to defy obstacles like God and language but also the cruel and imposing way they contribute to our terrestrial alienation. Granted, they're nowhere near evoking Brueghel or Kircher's respective conceptions, but they do the trick. Wide open spaces are often contrasted (the endless valleys and hills in Morocco; the harsh sameness of the Californian desert), and they are no less hostile or uninviting. Nature seems poised to swallow us whole - a damning realization inflicted upon those who would overstep their boundaries and trespass on loftier grounds (Amelia the illegal immigrant; the self-important American couple; the Moroccan sharpshooting boys). Respite comes only in those moments when we are surrounded by like-minded people celebrating the joys of life on Earth, and indeed the two happiest scenes are the Mexican wedding (overflowing with festivity and good cheer) and the virtuoso Japanese nightclub sequence in which the audience is entreated to experience Chieko's disoriented soundless dancing first-hand as the start-stop chopped-up sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" play a dizzying game of tag with the strobe lights, throwing us for a sensory loop. Sure, both scenes slowly spiral into tragedy, but at the height of their glory both Amelia and Chieko are able to feel connected through basic, earthy body language.

Similarly, and surely unintentionally, Babel collapses under the weight of its own errant ambitions. The film's final solemn scenes (set to composer Ryuichi Sakamoto's haunting arrangement of "Bibo No Aozora") are redemptive, trying to position Chieko as some sort of symbolic figure on the brink of suicide from atop her father's high-rise apartment - a veritable Tower of Babel - and for a time it seems like the film's entire pan-national hurly-burly screeches to a unified reflective halt, ruminating on humanity's child-like helplessness and cosmological abandonment. It's a beautiful, provocative conclusion, but if only everything preceding it were as stirring then we might have had a truly bold and important piece of work. As it is, Babel's potential to foster compassion is there, but it's buried underneath a heap of swampy We Live In Troubled Times obviousness.

(Babel is currently playing at Crystal Palace 8 Cinemas, located at 499 Paul St., Dieppe.)