Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's BABEL

[mouton]

BABEL
Written by Guillermo Arriaga
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu


Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has a point to make with his second Hollywood offering, BABEL. He wants us to see how we don’t listen to each other and to what extent that is making all of our lives more difficult. To do this, he tells four different stories where characters find themselves in situations where they are not understood despite all their efforts to be. These stories stretch across the globe, from Tokyo to Mexico and center around an incident in Morocco that sparks an international scandal. Inarritu treats his imagery like poetry and has created a stunning picture with pacing that ranges from peacefully prophetic to tensely wrenching. But despite its unmitigated design, there is a larger irony undermining BABEL. It is a film concerned with the struggles faced when trying to get your point across that also wants to show how our lives are all connected yet its four storylines stretch to connect to each other and the point gets somewhat lost in that process.

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett play Richard and Susan, an American married couple on a sour vacation in Morocco. Their youngest child has just died of natural causes and they have come to try to forget. Instead, the guilt and anger they could not express at home has only become more prominent in their isolation. A stray bullet hits Susan in the shoulder while she glares out her tour bus window and her vacation goes from bad to potentially tragic. The unfolding of this scenario best exemplifies Inarritu’s views on the frustration that often goes alongside communication. A desperately frightened Richard must get his wife medical attention in a town without a hospital and where no one speaks his language. He finds one tour guide who carries him through the experience, facilitating his translation. Speech is not his only barrier as this small Moroccan village’s medical treatment is far from what Richard is accustomed to in his privileged life at home in California. He then runs into trouble where one would not expect him to. He is unable to convey the seriousness of his wife’s condition to the remaining tour bus passengers, most of them American. He requires their support but they don’t listen to a word he says, focusing solely on their own needs, some selfish and some reasonable. As Richard is rightfully focused on his wife’s needs, he isn’t listening to them either and arguments ensue. Richard’s communicative difficulties also extend to one other person, Susan. Writer Guillermo Arriaga brings us to the most intimate frustration with understanding here when these two people require a brush with death to get them to be quiet enough to hear how afraid each other is and how responsible each feels for the death of their child.

The remaining plots branch out from this incident but whereas the execution of the plights is poignantly told, the connections themselves are weak or vice versa. Richard and Susan’s children run into trouble of their own when their Mexican Nanny, Amelia (Adriana Barraza) takes them over the border so that she can attend her son’s wedding. When reentering the United States, the border patrol are suspicious and begin asking many questions. Amelia does not have difficulties speaking English but does not answer their questions as well as she should. The film loses some focus here, as the patrollers’ approaches are more racist in nature than anything else. Whereas racism is certainly another form of fear and misunderstanding, this dire situation feels easily unavoidable and contrived to serve the film’s purpose. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a deaf and mute teenage girl deals with the loss of her mother and fights to be heard when she can’t make any noise. Cheiko is played by Rinko Kikuchi; it is a vibrant and commanding performance. She herself cannot hear what others are trying to say and is limited in how she can communicate her own feelings and desires. Her struggle is only intensified by her lack of physical connection to other people, as she is an aggravated virgin. All of her attempts to entice are thwarted by her silent aggression and her incapacity to get anyone to hear her is heartbreaking. In many ways, her storyline is the most effective but it is only tied to the whole of the film because her father’s rifle was used in Susan’s shooting in Morocco.

The word “babel” finds its roots in an association to the Hebrew verb “balal,” which means to confuse or confound. Hence, when someone is said to be babbling, they are not communicating their point properly, just spewing out a bunch of unnecessary words that end up being entirely pointless. All of Inarritu’s words and images are carefully chosen and constructed in a concise fashion that is on many levels successful, but by trying to get across so much, he ends up narrowly but sadly missing his own point.

[Chris Knipp]

I may get to watch this very soon. I'm curious to see it. How are Pitt and Blanchett and Bernal? I don't think you say. though your overall evaluation of the picture is clearly and neatly expressed.

[mouton]

Yeah, I guess I didn't talk so much about the acting. Pitt is being pumped up pretty big for this one ... like he's never showed such range. I feel like that's a stretch ... maybe its because he's got dark circles under his eyes and he cries. Seriously though, he is good and so is Blanchette but that's almost a given. They have good chemistry together in the sense that they convincingly show the difficulties their characters are experiencing together. Bernal I found to be disappointing. I generally really enjoy him. He didn't have much to play with here. It's a beautiful film, I wish I connected with it more.

[oscar jubis]

I reserve a special place in my heart for ambitious filmmakers who tackle important, "big" themes. Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu fits that description. He always takes a panoramic view of human nature, and Babel, his third feature, is drenched in contemporary relevance. He returns to his multi-strand, cross-cutting narrative style to illustrate the consequences of miscommunication and carelessness in a globalized 21st century. While doing so, Babel ponders issues such as immigration, Westerner entitlement, terrorism and urban alienation.

Babel is consistently gripping and engrossing. I am not surprised that it received three awards at the Cannes film festival: Best Director, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and Grand Technical award (for editing). The film is simply a technical marvel. Two sequences in particular astound: one inside a Tokyo disco, and a wedding in a small village in northern Mexico. Gonzalez-Inarritu deserves admiration for, among many other things, his direction of actors. It's no surprise that the seasoned pros are fine; it's that the performances of lesser actors and non-actors are equally accomplished. Two Moroccan boys and a Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza) steal every scene in which they appear. As a matter of fact, Ms. Barraza (Amores Perros) is being mentioned as a possible nominee at the Oscars and Golden Globes.

Babel is a thesis film on a large canvas in which, lamentably, some characters get short-shrifted.

"I might buy Babel if it had any real interest in its characters"
(David Ansen, Newsweek)

"The filmmakers don't seem to understand or care much about many of these people"
(Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader).

Ansen and Rosenbaum are perhaps guilty of exaggeration but their argument is valid. The most glaring example involves Chieko. We meet the deaf-mute Tokyo teen during a volleyball game. She gets suspended from the game due to a temper tantrum. After the game, a teammate suggests she needs to get laid. She flashes guys at clubs, disrobs in front of strangers, and attempts to kiss her dentist. Their rejection only increases her frustration. Later we learn that months earlier she found her mother shot in their apartment's balcony. When a cop tells her he needs to talk to her dad, she wonders whether he was implicated in her mother's death. Chieko is saddled with too much suffering and too many complications for a character in one out of four subplots. Gonzalez-Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga cannot possibly begin to do justice to such a character. Chieko deserves her own movie. Other weaknesses in the script, namely credibility lapses, are easier to overlook.

Despite its flaws, Babel is an important, technically brilliant, and engrossing movie that deserves to be seen.

[Chris Knipp]

I have seen Babel now and can't add much to what you have said. I may have some other comments about the theme and the way he treats it; as for the degree of accomplishment in the shooting and the work with actors, etc., I found this much more satisfying than 21 Grams, which isn't mentioned here, nor is Amores Perros. I still prefer the latter, but that Iñárritu has grown in skill as well as ambition is unquestionable. I am not satisfied with the structure, but the scenes were wonderful and they stay in my mind.

[Chris Knipp]

Alejandro González Iñárritu: Babel (2006)

A spectacular failure

By Chris Knipp

Ingenious though Babel's structure is (and it is welcomely easier to follow than his previous multiple narrative film, 21 Grams), terrible and sad as the events it recounts are, beautiful as the photography is, good as the acting is, when it's all over, you want to say, So what?

Bad stuff happens in the Moroccan desert; to a beautiful, disturbed deaf mute girl in Tokyo; and on the US-Mexican border. Things are connected, Guillermo Arriaga's and Iñárritu's screenplay says, but people. . . aren't?

Sometimes it feels as if the film's trailer had the basic titular "Babel" theme (multiple languages as God's punishment of man) better than the whole movie: it focused on Brad Pitt yelling long distance at his Mexican nanny and up close at a Moroccan man in a truck who doesn't know hospital means mustashfa (not that it would matter, since there isn't one anywhere near). For sure, a deaf mute girl has communication problems with the general public. Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) communicates on an animal level by showing her naked crotch and body to teenage boys and a police detective she finds attractive. Her girlfriend says her temper tantrums happen because she needs to get laid; but we learn her mother's suicide may also be behind her weirdness. This is too complicated to have anything clear to do with a rifle (once her dad's) that causes bad trouble for some Moroccans after it wounds the wife of a grieving couple (Cate Blanchett; married to Brad Pitt). Apart from Cheiko's story, the connections aren't far-fetched, but the way they're supposed to generate our interest in four separate sets of people in a narrative style that strives for simultaneity seems contrived.

And ultimately the overall thinking of the film isn't clear. Is everything connected -- or are things simply out of joint? And what about good things -- does a 'butterfly effect' ever lead to them, too? Babel, like some other earnest omnibus films (Crash, for example) loses touch, in its frantic rush toward grave outcomes, with the idiosyncratic and the comic, aspects of life that Shakespeare's tragedies, in their renaissance fullness, never fails to supply. It seems to subjugate the world's complexity to the simplicity of a thesis, even though that thesis is blurred.

But this is too absorbing and accomplished a movie for us to write it off. Every scene of Babel is intense and real (allowing for the detachment we feel about over-exposed actors like Pitt and Blanchett, and the knowingness around seeing the chameleon García Bernal back as a poor Mexican again after being English, Chicano, half-French, etc.). The cinematography is great-looking (perhaps most knowing and stylish in doing a Mexican border town). The scenes of the Moroccans seem most authentic, not only because so well acted and directed, but because we don't know Moroccan well enough (if at all) to sense false notes or theatricality.

It's been said that the deaf girl deserves her own separate movie. Perhaps so. But I'd put it differently. I'd say we deserve a separate movie about this tragic incident of the Moroccan boys and the American tourists, free of this girl's irrelevant story. The couple's "illegal" nanny is another matter. Her narrative is relevant to the couple, to all Americans, and to the Mexican filmmakers. An undercurrent of the story is about underdogs vs. top dogs and how they get vastly different treatment, and to that theme the nanny's story is more than a footnote, a pendant, showing how the high and mighty get mixed in with the exploited.

After a while as sequences of the big blocks of events unfold -- Japanese deaf girl; Moroccans pursued by police; Mexican nanny lost in desert with wilting white kids; panicky Brad and scared Cate -- the shifts from one to another become more and more wearing because they have so little to do with each other. It's hard to care for all these people at once, in one 142-minute sit. You may almost wish each segment's content and direction weren't so clear; then the interrelationships might become more suggestive. This is how Adieu, Arnaud de Pallière's intriguing, too-little-known 2004 film about death and a country family and "illegal" Arab immigrants in France works. Its scenes and discussions are idiosyncratic and their connection isn't made clear, and so we, the viewers, become participants, and when we find solutions, we believe in them.

Babel's connections -- Japanese guy gives away rifle to Moroccan guide; Moroccan boys take potshots; American woman becomes injured; nanny makes error of judgment -- are clear and credible. What's much less credible in the film's structure is how quickly all these events are dealt with, broadcast, and resolved. Brad Pitt must really be Brad Pitt to get a U.S. Medivac helicopter flown into the Moroccan desert within 24 hours of his wife's injury. Maybe in weeks or months Moroccan authorities would penetrate rural omertà and find the sharpshooters who plugged a tourist bus; here, though, it happens at once. The guide is found, and he tells who he sold the gun to, pdq. In French they call the "grapevine" "le téléphone arabe," but still…. And in hours or days this event in the Moroccan desert, a town where one guy has a phone, gets onto Japanese TV news so the cop the deaf girl flashed sees it at a drink shop. That sure is amazing. There's a lot we aren't told, that we'd need to know for this to seem possible.

As the saying goes, a miss is as good as a mile. The talented Iñárritu's exalted aims and solemn humorlessness only make Babel's failure to add up to anything more embarrassing and disappointing. I liked Ashton Kutcher in The Butterfly Effect (a far inferior movie) better. Its preposterous and elaborate plot at least was fun to talk about. I also liked Amores Perros much better. It seemed to revel in trashiness, delightfully -- only moving on to solemn significance in the third segment. Babel tries to fly high from frame one, and it suffers the fate of Icarus. But Iñárritu's so good with actors, locations, and the camera, this still could be one of the year's best movies.

[oscar jubis]

Well done.

I wish one of us had mentioned the name of the cinematographer. It's time to hail RODRIGO PRIETO and commit his name to memory. He is top-class, gentlemen.

Selected Filmography:

BABEL
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
ALEXANDER
21 GRAMS
25TH HOUR
8 MILE
FRIDA
AMORES PERROS
OPTIC FIBER
UNDER A SPELL

Prieto is currently in Malaysia shooting Ang Lee's next film. At least we know it'll look terrific.

[Chris Knipp]

Well done. Thanks! We were remiss, but other reviews I've read (though haven't read many) have I think all mentioned the cinematographer. That is an odd CV. He seems to be hitching up with Ang Lee, and that's a good recommendation of his work, as well.

Babel is one of those cases where I have been guided by what I saw and not what I expected. At first I expected something marvellous, or at least very exciting and propulsive (I don't think ultimately it is). Then after seeing a couple reviews I suspected I wouldn't like it--as I didn't like 21 Grms. But finally, I have had to acknowledge that this is remarkable, indeed superb filmmaking, even though I feel that thematically it doesn't live up to its pretentions.

I was wondering about you when I mentioned here de Pallières' Adieu. I suspect you haven't seen it. I only saw it because I got to a rep house version of Paris' MK2 chain at the right time a couple years ago. It would be so interesting to discuss it in terms of this manner of filmmaking, where unconnected things are connected. Adieu was hard to watch. It was another one like Ackerman's La-bàs, where a number of people walked out, could not go the distance. But I felt it was more rewarding than Babel because, as I suggested in my review, when you have to work to make the connections, they become more profound and interesting and perhaps ultimately more believable.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I was wondering about you when I mentioned here de Pallières' Adieu. I suspect you haven't seen it.

You've mentioned Adieu several times and I read your review (at your website). It reads like something I would thoroughly enjoy. I haven't seen it and few have. It played at a few 2nd and 3rd tier Euro fests and never crossed the Atlantic. Which probably means that it's rather avant garde and challenging. Then again there are several recognizable faces among the cast. I'm surprised it didn't come to Toronto. Highly likely I'll never have a chance to watch it, unless de Pallieres gains prominence via a future hit. I don't think there's a French dvd release available currently. Right?

[Chris Knipp]

No there is a DVD of Arnaud de Pallieres' Adieu and it's available from Amazon France, a "coffret" of 2 DVDs for 27 Euros, on sale or used for 19.

http://www.amazon.fr/Adieu-Coffret-DVD-Michael-Lonsdale/dp/B000C4ADEM

Cahiers du Cinema nominated it along with a bunch of others for its annual best DVD award; other nominees included such recent but hard to find in the US faves of mine as Sokurov's The Sun, Beauvois' Le Petit lieutenant, and Philippe Garrel's Les Amants reguliers. I found that information here (http://onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2006/11/prix_dvd_des_ca.html). Their winner was Robert Kramer's 1989 Route One; I wonder if you are familiar with that one; I'm not.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098227/

Le Petit Lieutenant did have some limited US distribution--they reviewed it in TimeOut NY. But I saw it at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today and again at the SFIFF.

[oscar jubis]

*If you can and have the time, please find out if the Adieu dvd has English subs and what's on the second dvd.

*I'm importing UK versions of Sokurov's The Sun and Hadzihalilovic's Innocence. Currently busy with 3 new Yasujiro Ozu dvds made in Hong Kong.

*Le Petit Lieutenant did not travel beyond LA and NYC. Negative reviews of it on Variety and the Voice; positive reviews on the NY and LA Times. No word on a dvd release.

*I've read about Robert Kramer but I've never managed to catch anything he's done (besides act in Cedric Kahn's L'Ennui). The title of Route 1 USA refers to US1, the highway that extends from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West. Kramer moved to France in the late 70s but returned briefly to his native country to make this 253 min. mix of documentary and fiction.

[Chris Knipp]

Here is the information about the Adieu DVD from the Fnac website--which indicates English subtitles:

Un film singulier, superbe, inquiet
de Arnaud des Pallières
avec Michaël Lonsdale, Aurore Clément, Olivier Gourmet, Laurent Lucas, Axel Bogousslavsky, Mohamed Rouabhi
Arte Vidéo 2006 / 25 € - 163.75 ffr.
Durée DVD 191 mn.
Durée film 121 mn.
Classification : Tous publics

Sortie Cinéma : 2003

Version : DVD 9
Format vidéo : 16/9 compatible 4/3
Format image : 1 : 66
Format audio : VO français. Dolby SRD 5.1 et Dolby digital stéréo
Sous-titres : Anglais

DVD Bonus :

Scènes commentées (40’) :
7 parcours critiques, 7 textes lus sur des images du film : Emile Breton, journaliste à L'Humanité ; Jean-Louis Comolli, cinéaste et critique ; Vincent Dieutre, cinéaste ; Jean Douchet, cinéaste et critique ; Jacques Mandelbaum, critique de cinéma ; Marie-José Mondzain, philosophe ; Jean-Luc Nancy, philosophe.

Les Choses rouges (20’) :
Court-métrage d'Arnaud des Pallières
Un ouvrier rentre de l'usine, sur sa mobylette, à travers la banlieue-est de Paris. En pensée, il dresse le musée imaginaire des "choses rouges".

Entretien avec Arnaud des Pallières (11’) :
Extraits de Court Circuit, le magazine du court métrage d’Arte.

I'm not sureif the stuff on the bonus disc has subtitles, but probably not.

[oscar jubis]

Thank you very much.
The limitations of IMDb: A box on the upper right corner is supposed to indicate whether a film is available on dvd in the US, Canada, France, or Germany. The one for Adieu is blank. Also, des Pallieres' filmography doesn't include the short Les Choses Rouges (and who knows what else).

[Chris Knipp]

I know. But you can make additions yourself. It's admittedly a big hassle though.

[bix171]

Though it's hard to deny its world-class filmmaking and ambitious scale, "Babel" is so numbingly downbeat that it may end up defeating its' raison d'etre, which is to make a multitude of various national audiences think about their relationships--or lack thereof--with each other. Expertly cutting between three connected, but only tenuously related, stories taking place on three continents, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga seem to find only misery and disconnect everywhere they look and the results mount with harrowing intensity (yet, oddly, culminate in quiet anticlimax). For some reason, there seems to be a small sense of anti-American sentiment, particulary in its primary story of an American couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) stranded in Morocco when Blanchett is shot by a stray bullet and becomes the focus of a media frenzy with its' attendant cries of terrorism; but this sentiment (along with its counterpart, a confrontation on the Mexican/U.S. border) seems underdeveloped, little more than a small, festering wound whose appearance the filmmakers seem at a loss to explain. Though there are some attempts at understanding (Pitt bonds, although not fully, with his Moroccan guide), the film seems to have a head-shaking attitude for its worldview. Far more bewildering--and equally unexplained--is an attitude towards those female characters who dare to explore or exploit their sexuality; Inarritu and Arriaga seem to want to punish them (a Mexican nanny is forced to abandon her American charges in the desert a day after her son's wedding at which she allows herself to be seduced by a widower; a young Moroccan girl is beaten by her father for allowing one of her brothers to spy on her undressing) or have them punish themselves (a Japanese deaf-mute throws herself at unsuspecting adult males to compensate for the distance she's placed between her and her widowed father). Only Blanchett, trying to cope with the loss of her infant son and the strain it has put on her marriage, seems to be let off somewhat easily--it's as if she's done her penance through the loss of her child and being shot. Worth seeing for the fine, underplayed performances (Adriana Baraza as the put-upon nanny and Rinko Kikuchi as the deaf-mute are especially impressive) and the exotic locales but not as well thought as it should have been and definately a wearying experience.

[Chris Knipp]

I agree with a lot of what you say, if not with your conclusions. You have some keen observations on plot elements that had escaped me since viewing, and there's a lot in your comment that could have been developed further. It's Brad Pitt who's up for an Oscar. You might have mentioned that? Or did you prefer not to touch it?
Though it's hard to deny its world-class filmmaking and ambitious scale, "Babel" is so numbingly downbeat that it may end up defeating its' raison d'etre, which is to make a multitude of various national audiences think about their relationships--or lack thereof--with each other. That in particlar, worthy of further clarification, and development.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by bix171
Far more bewildering--and equally unexplained--is an attitude towards those female characters who dare to explore or exploit their sexuality; Inarritu and Arriaga seem to want to punish them (a Mexican nanny is forced to abandon her American charges in the desert a day after her son's wedding at which she allows herself to be seduced by a widower; a young Moroccan girl is beaten by her father for allowing one of her brothers to spy on her undressing) or have them punish themselves (a Japanese deaf-mute throws herself at unsuspecting adult males to compensate for the distance she's placed between her and her widowed father). Only Blanchett, trying to cope with the loss of her infant son and the strain it has put on her marriage, seems to be let off somewhat easily--it's as if she's done her penance through the loss of her child and being shot.

Very perceptive. A well-reasoned argument. I like Babel for Rodrigo Prieto's lensing, the editing, and a few performances. But overall, it feels like a lost opportunity, mostly because the characters get short-shrifted.

[bix171]

Chris Knipp writes:

It's Brad Pitt who's up for an Oscar. You might have mentioned that? Or did you prefer not to touch it?

I don't think Brad Pitt's been nominated. And while I think he can be a fine actor (he's a riot in "True Romance" and very good in "12 Monkeys"), I think his performance here was merely competent. It was also, as was so much of the film, underwritten.

That in particlar, worthy of further clarification, and development.

Actually, the title "Babel", with its biblical reference, seems the most obvious and trite thing about the entire film; I wish it'd been given a more subtly suggestive title. Be that as it may, I think the filmmakers' goal, in a perfect world, was to get people to talk about their cultural differences and, as such, form a consensus. I think that, unlike most filmmakers today who seem to welcome homogenization (Paul Haggis' "Crash" comes to mind; in fact, while watching it, I kept thinking "'Crash' in reverse"), Inarritu wants us to think he celebrates cultural differences, as if to imply that it's okay that cultures differ as long as we learn to respect that.

But, in a way, I think Inarritu doesn't really believe that. For example, when demanding an ambulance for his injured wife, Pitt not only tells the messenger "Fuck you", he also makes a point to say the same thing to the guide who's been holding a vigil alongside him. This is why, in my original comments, I note that he doesn't fully bond with the guide; when it comes down to it, the guide is still a foreigner and Pitt sees other races as "the Other". (Ironically, in this situation, Pitt's the foreigner.)

Which brings me back to the slight anti-American sentiment that ingratiates itself into the film's weave. It's kind of tired to consistently paint Americans as holier-than-thou and priviledged with special rights, even when visiting a foreign country (though, granted, the various Europeans on the bus seem to have been granted the same priviledged status by Inarritu--and made to look equally as bad). Perhaps because the film's style triumphs over its substance, it's not as damning as it might seem in the hands of another, less talented director.

And therein lies the cynicism I think is in Irnarritu's heart: while he's hoping for a dialogue, he doesn't expect one. Though the film ends with the binding of daughter to father--and the implicit hope for humanity a film like this is supposed to have--it feels forced, a stretch.

Oscar Jubis writes:

it feels like a lost opportunity

Yeah...a lost opportunity. I like that. Sums the whole thing up in a nutshell.

[Chris Knipp]

I was confused saying Brad Pitt had an Oscar nomination. But in this country his performance has gotten a lot of favorable mention, that's all. Don't agree his performance is merely competent; he gives his all. And we agree he can be a good actor.

I don't think the title Babel is "trite," but you're right that the theme it suggests when you hear it and see the trailers is not lived up to in the movie. I see what you mean, though. But doesn't that conflict between the celebration of diversity and the title show a confusion of aims? You're saying that yourself.


Which brings me back to the slight anti-American sentiment that ingratiates itself into the film's weave. It's kind of tired to consistently paint Americans as holier-than-thou and priviledged with special rights, even when visiting a foreign country (though, granted, the various Europeans on the bus seem to have been granted the same priviledged status by Inarritu I guess you mean insinuates rather than ingratiates. Your statement is a bit confusing. Americans do think themselves "holier-than-thou and privileged" even if at times they aren't. This theme is not "tired". I also don't get why you keep calling this a "slight" anti-American sentiment. I'd say it's pretty large, not slight.Innaritu is confused about this too though, which maybe is why your discussion gets a little tangled. He justifies Pitt's character's superior attitude by having his wife get magically medi-vaced out of the Moroccan bled, which I think would a pretty neat trick, especially given that there are almost no communications.


And therein lies the cynicism I think is in Irnarritu's heart: while he's hoping for a dialogue, he doesn't expect one. Again I think it's confusion but not cynicism--he's just pessimistic. Surely we can assume that from Amores Perros and 21 Grams?


Oscar Jubis writes:

it feels like a lost opportunity

Yeah...a lost opportunity. I like that. Sums the whole thing up in a nutshell. I don't think it puts anything in a nutshell. What opportunity? The opportunity for a talented filmmaker, as Denby says, to figure out a way to shake up conventional moviemaking? (Denby concluded his review of Babel, "Iñárritu has enough talent to shake up conventional moviemaking. But he still hasn’t figured out how to use it.") But given the tangled and pretentious material Iñárritu chose to work with, where's the opportunity Babel offered? You have demonstrated that the effort was doomed from the start -- not an opportunity.

However I have a gut feeling that this is still a great movie even though it's bloated and pretentious, because of the excellence of the scenes, and they're not just good "lensing." Good "lensing" is empty in itself. Innaritu has put together some powerful material here. But it's just that his high flown overall theme does not fly. I like this movie better than Cuaron's and del Toro's latest efforts because, partly, Innaritu has been true to his own themes, while Cuaron and del Toro have gone off in pop directions and shown no consistent vision. (Yes, I know Pan's Labyrinth has strong links with del Toro's first film, but he has Disneyfied the world of his original vision too much.)

[bix171]

the theme it suggests when you hear it and see the trailers is not lived up to in the movie....doesn't that conflict between the celebration of diversity and the title show a confusion of aims?

I don't agree that there's a confusion of aims, just a lack of execution. Your quote of Denby's comments is right on. And what I think I meant by "slight" was perhaps in retrospect a feeling of lack of development, ideas stillborn. Therer's too much going on for Inarritu, let alone the audience, to focus on and the big ideas seem smaller.

I also don't feel the film is, as you say a few sentances later, "bloated and pretentious". I think it is a sincere, somewhat understated, picture with ambitious goals made by an immensely talented director whose best work is still ahead of him.

[Chris Knipp]

We don't have to quibble, we essentially agree on this. I am impressed by the film despite of those adjectives I used. I guess I think you can be pretentious and still sincere; I'm not saying he isn't the latter. I get what you mean by "slight" now and also can grant the possibility of "lack of development" rather than "confusion of aims." That's fair. We'll see what Iñárritu does next, and whether Denby's statement turns out to have a positive outcome. Your discussion has been interesting.

[bix171]

Thanks!I don't think we're quibbling, just exchanging viewpoints and you're right: we essentially agree.

I also agree that it has been an interesting conversation. With both you and Oscar they always are.

[Chris Knipp]

May they long continue.