Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006)

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer

[Lino]

That link doesn't work. This one does. And God, how I love this man's work. Iñarritu has a view of the world that very few director's in the whole history of the cinema seem to have. Of course, the idea of everything being universally connected (that whole story of a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere in South America and a hurricane hitting the shores of a country in Asia, or something like that) has already been explored before but he just takes it to another level. And how.

[Antoine Doinel]

Definitely looking forward to this. The trailer is great.

[Fierias]

This looks every bit as didactic as 21 Grams. I'll see it, just because I loved Amores Perros and Cannes thought it deserved a Best Director award, but it looks like a more international and more artfully done version of Crash at the moment.

[Len]

I'd see it just for Koji Yakusho, but the rest of the film seems interesting too.

[Lino]

Cinematical takes a look at Babel.

[Lino]

Babel from Taschen.

[portnoy]

Movie is an extremely mixed bag - too didactic at times, frustrating in the sheer banality and simplicity of its political project. I found the Blanchett/Pitt stuff unengaging, the Mexican story ridiculous and insultingly facile. The Japan narrative and the narrative concerning the Moroccans are the ones that work the best, but even they're kinda lackluster. The movie has some exceptional moments, though - wordless hyperkinetic montage sequences of two parties that are completely overwhelming on the level of pure spectacle. He should've just kept cutting for the entire movie instead of making easy jabs at global structures of social and economic capital.

More Vertov, less Eisenstein. It would've done the film a lot of good.

[John Cope]

I'm looking forward to Babel but I do have my doubts. For two almost ridiculously opposed views take a look at Rex Reed in the NY Observer and Armond White in the NY Press.

[Lino]

Interview with Iñárritu.

[Don Lope de Aguirre]

This looks every bit as didactic as 21 Grams.

Just viewing the trailer I can all ready smell the worthiness! Inarritu is so portentious and so "heavy"...in a News at 10 kind of a way...

[Barmy]

If Rex Reed thinks it is the best film of 2006, then it must be godawful. If Armond White thinks it sucks, then it must be great.

[franco]

Babel is one of the best turn-your-brain-off movies I have ever seen. The title stops having any relevance as soon as Iñárritu gives in to the fact that he's just remaking his own movies. The Japan segment is quite memorable. Some of the transitions between narratives are simply amazing. At the end the movie seems like an exercise to stuff as many emotional scenes in one package as possible, although at the same time it doesn't eschew plot or tidiness.

Nevertheless, I didn't get the feeling that the film is trying to teach us anything. How could it be didactic? Let me go read some reviews.

[Michael]

I'm still debating whether to go see Babel tonight or not. Reading a handful of reviews of this film made me think of Babel as the modern Intolerance.

[Lino]

Michael, go and see it, please. I've yet to see it but I am sooo looking forward to it. Reviewers sometimes miss the boat on so many movies that I've stopped reading them altogether.

And being the modern Intolerance cannot be a bad thing, can it?

[chaddoli]

I honestly don't understand the praise this film is getting. It is not particularly good or compelling in any way, besides visually, I guess.

[Lino]

What was it that you didn't particularly like?

[chaddoli]

Well, the most apparent flaw in the whole thing is that Arriaga is far-overreaching. He doesn't spend enough time with any of the characters for me to care about them, and the time he does spend seems rather dull. Cate Blanchette, the best actor in the damn thing is reduced to crying and grunting for the 40 or so minutes Inaritu chooses to give her on screen. I just thought the whole thing was rather boring. And in the end many loose ends are still unresolved (what happened to Santiago? what the fuck was up with the Japanese chick? what happened to the Moroccan family?). It seems like they decided to end the film once they made sure the white people were going to be okay because none of us give a shit about anybody else (which, I guess, ended up being true). Each of their films seem to be trying to one-up the previous in terms of scale, but end up falling short in terms of substance (excluding the excellent "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada").

[franco]

what the fuck was up with the Japanese chick? what happened to the Moroccan family?

Interesting. Either that I didn't completely turn my brain off, or that one needs to turn the brain off to understand the plot.

[chaddoli]

My brain was on, and what I meant was, with the Japanese girl in particular, it wasn't that I didn't understand her character or her motivations. I didn't understand why I was supposed to care about what was going on with her. It just seemed contrived, Crash-like posturing.....Arriaga and Inaritu jerking each other off over how epic their geniuses are.

[Michael]

The reason why I'm debating about seeing Babel is because I do not care for Innaritu's previous works. I just don't like his style. But the synopsis about the deaf Japanese girl sounds very fascinating since my partner is deaf. That's the only reason that got me interested. From what I read in a number of reviews, Babel appears to be 2+ hours of nothing but tragedies puking all over you nonstop (not my thing) and a couple of reviews also claim that it's the most positive film Innaritu has done so far. So I don't know. Maybe best to wait for DVD.

[franco]

[...] with the Japanese girl in particular, it wasn't that I didn't understand her character or her motivations. I didn't understand why I was supposed to care about what was going on with her.

Thanks for the explanation and sorry for my facetious comment! I'd like to think that she's in the movie for being an obvious victim of language barrier.

Michael, you are right on with the puking thing, but the reviews you mention do make sense, since among all the calamities in the movie, there's a sign of hope.

[John Cope]

I saw this tonight and liked it a great deal, though I confess to some misgivings which might be eliminated upon a closer viewing when I'm less distracted. My audience was not the most receptive or sympathetic. During the periods when I was able to concentrate certain things became apparent.

I liked Inarritu's non-linear storytelling better here than in 21 Grams, though I need to see that one again. Here it feels earned and wise for the most part. The Asian girl plotline does feel barely connected but it's thematically resonant and in that way of a piece with everything else. I appreciated Inarritu's daring in taking time with these scenes in particular, considering how tenuously they seem to hang with the rest. His cutting makes the point for him. One particularly great cut is from the girl crying on the shoulder of the policeman to the Arab boy huddled up in a similar position. I also liked his efforts to nullify conventional suspense by loudly proclaiming the (apparent) outcome of events for all those with ears to hear. This helps to re-frame our attention in an emotionally profitable manner.

Connection or the lack thereof is the much publicized theme of Babel, but I don't believe it's the only important one. In fact, I would say that the idea of societal dominance may be more important, if less cleanly stated. There is good reason for the variety of settings here; they do act as complements for one another, building blocks in a wall of world incomprehension, but more than that they provide evidence of a breach between societies which is vast and daunting. Certainly, the problems of communication are first personal (within societies) but they indicate larger group, even tribal, inclinations. Innaritu falters some when he suggests that the problem is a militaristic or police matter--the attitudes that create those agencies don't just spring fully formed into existence, they emanate from somewhere specific. Still, one cannot fault his desire to rectify tragic wrongs or mistake the passionate empathy he brings to the discussion. And he nails it more often than not and often in subtle ways. The Mexican community is overtly more welcoming than its ethnically divided American counterpart but it is presented, as with the Asian community, as racially monolithic. The Arab community, meanwhile, is shown as peppered with tourists and we have every reason to believe the citizens view this presence as a benign form of imperialism. But are they always right to? This resentment can impede humane treatment and personal empathy (one crowning touch is the pan over to the soccer game on the TV as Pitt is told his story is all over the news). The Pitt-Blanchett scenes are important because they act as a counter to notions of purely aggressive American dominance. Does mere presence indicate an oppressive intent? Does the hiring of a Mexican maid back in California immediately and always create associations with indifferent utility? Pitt's character even says explicitly at one point that he doesn't care about politics. Like all the rest he is a pawn of other powers.

Though the ending has been criticized by some for pandering to white American sensibilities (in the sense that the Pitt-Blanchett story is resolved and then, basically, the film ends) I think it's more complex than that. It's part of Inarritu's difficult point regarding cultural supremacy. It's easy to see the end as a concession to Hollywood hegemony but it can be just as easily seen as an implied acknowledgment of such dominance. Babel indicates how everyone's personal story can and often is turned into a political story when it suits the presiding power. This interconnection of humanness, implied beautifully in the choices of where to cut and what to cut to, suggests something deeper than the trite 6 degrees of Inarritu rhetoric. The common qualities of being alive and powerless, with no control of one's destiny in the face of larger, impersonal agendas is the driving theme here.

Inarritu does sometimes seem to deal from a stacked deck and traffic in essentially didactic ideas (the shot of the border patrol office with the pictures of Bush-Cheney adorning the wall just feels like a cheap shot and, of course, the grandstanding destruction of the rifle is easy and unnecessary), but the way he manages to humanize those ideas is what sets him apart. If you're open to them, moments like the one in which Pitt and Blanchett kiss and embrace at a point of very genuine personal vulnerability are deeply moving and recall the career high points of Amores perros and Inarritu's shockingly heartfelt BMW movie.

[Jay]

It's easy to see the end as a concession to Hollywood hegemony but it can be just as easily seen as an implied acknowledgment of such dominance. Babel indicates how everyone's personal story can and often is turned into a political story when it suits the presiding power.

Good point, John. Their narrative's closure likewise adds yet another layer to the director's interrogation of what stories the popular media elects to foreground and, by extension, which stories it eschews. In this sense, the Eurocentric "hapily ever after fairy-tale ending" functions as a fitting culmination to a ridiculously hyperbolized news story inflected throughout by an equally illusory and ideologically insidious pre-occupation with the "terrorist attack on the bus" (which is no more than a 10 year old's fuck up). It is, in other words, a necessary scene, especially given the film's recognition of the impact of systems of social power that are, as you so well note, far beyond the any of the characters' control.

[filmnoir1]

I saw this film this afternoon and I must say that I am thankful I did not have to pay to see it. While I enjoyed Inarritu's first film, and even found parts of 21 grams interesting, I found this film to be absolutely dreadful. I too echo everyone else's misgivings that the film ends with the Jones family safely in the arms of the US government. It felt as if the director and writer were acknowledging that all of the world is nothing more than an expansive tourist playground for white American's who are malcontent with their own lives and tragedies. In this time of terror and American hegemony this film simply expresses a feeling that it is okay for America and her citizens to dictate how people live, die, and suffer. Yet, the only suffering that matters is that of the white couple.

At times I felt as if I were watching a film that was trying to enlighten the global experience but ultimately it fails. Brad Pitt's character telling his maid/nanny to cancel her son's wedding because he cannot find anyone to look after his children while he and his wife are on holiday rings with tones of economic superiority and racism. Amelia is okay as long as she serves the interests of people who can afford a fancy home, swimming pool, and to travel to exotic places, but once she attempts to live her own life she becomes uncooperative and dangerous. Even more striking in this relationship is when she tells the border patrol cop that she has raised these kids since they were born and that they are like her own, he tells her that they are not hers and furthermore that she has been living in the US illegally. Her labor has been okay as long as she acquiesces to the demands of the dominant power but once she attempts to be her own person she is deported to Mexico. I also wonder what happened to Santiago and it seems that Gael Garcia Bernal is wasted in this film.

The scenes in Morocco ring false as well. There is no attempt to understand these characters or their lives, they simply act as set dressing, futher showing the Middle East as a third world geographical space that can be beautiful for pretty pictures but once the people attempt to take care of themselves and their problems they are labeled terrorists. Does everyone have to be a terrorist?

Finally the scenes in Japan seem to act as a travelogue showing Japan to be a place as decadent and interested in ubercapitalism as the US. I wonder how this film will play in other countries? I believe that this film is simply another example of how America seeks to colonize the rest of the world by telling them that their problems and ways of life are inferior to those of America.

Certainly this film will attract Oscar attention because of the scope and expense involved in its production but that does not mean that this is a great film. Rather, I believe it is a mediocre film that strives for greatness but it is a greatness that celebrates America and racism.