Babel – Ambitious, watchable, but falls short
This evening I watched Alejandro Gonzales Iñarittu’s third installment of his fragmented narrative trilogy, “Babel”, in what I must say was quite an exceptional theater at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Sadly, the film didn’t quite live up to the exceptionality of the theater.
That said, let me articulate that I am a HUGE fan of Iñarittu’s work. “Amores Perros” is one of my all-time favorites, and so is “21 Grams”. While “Amores Perros” may have just been one story too long, “21 Grams” was built on an exceptionally taut narrative. What made both these films work was the fact that they were strongly focused, and heightened drama by underplaying it. The more Iñarittu’s characters wanted to come out of their shell, he drove them physically back into it. In a strange way, it became his style of directing performance. Something quite splendid. “Babel” in comparison is a little all over the place. Though Brad Pitt throws up a fairly strong performance, the rest of the cast often get quite melodramatic, and certain plot points and occurrences quite cliched: both quite uncharacteristic of Iñarittu’s filmmaking, and Guillermo Arriaga’s writing. Tying up multiple stories in his last two films came naturally to Iñarittu. There was a flow to it. Here in “Babel, he seems to be forcing it.
Iñarittu has set a precedent for the way he uses music, but again here, he overdoes it. The technique of cutting out all ambient sounds and letting the picture play solely to music works in certain scenes, and is drawn too long in others. It lacks the vibrant energy that was created in “Amores Perros”. Additionally, using Gustavo Santaolalla’s music repetitively from his last two films works initially as an homage to his previous parts of the trilogy, but its extensive use in the climax really exemplifies lack of craft on the director’s part.
Despite all this trashing, I will still say that “Babel” is a film worth watching. Average at best, yes, but not bad. For me, it was a film that could have been. Especially since its made by Iñarittu, one of the freshest voices to emerge in world cinema in the last decade.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
So even the great Arriaga couldn’t sustain it for the third time huh?
…anyways, a must watch!
Arriaga’s films slowly grow on you…so may be Babel also comes up in the ratings slowly…
I would still like to watch n discuss the film more, can we have an insight on the story, at least the background?
Sure Tushar. I’ll try not to give away too much. Brad Pitt and his wife Cate Blanchett are vacationing in Morocco, their marriage is kind of on the rocks, and they’re trying to set things right. Kids are left with their Mexican nanny back home in San Diego. Couple of young pre-teen boys in a Moroccan desert village are target-practicing with a rifle, they shoot at a tourist bus at a very far distance, not expecting the bullet to carry so far. Too bad for them, it carries. Bullet hits Cate. (All this stuff is shown in the trailer already, so I wouldn’t call these spoilers). Simultaneously, there are 2 other parallel stories, one of the Mexican nanny, trying to attend her son’s wedding in Mexico, and another one of a deaf-mute teenage girl in Japan, looking for love. The film focuses on Pitt-Blanchett’s story, and finds strands from the Japanese story for a connection, while the Nanny is trying to attend her son’s wedding (with the 2 kids) and get back safely into the US.
In Inarittu’s previous films, a lot was going on, but in “Babel”, not much is really going on. The plot is thin, and certainly doesn’t warrant the length of the film. I felt it could have easily been about 40 mins shorter. Still worth watching though. I look forward to discussing it further after you have seen the film.
Thanks a ton, Vijay.
Sounds like the story does carry the overtures of death, coincidence, remorse, guilt & redemption seen in his works.
I remember hearing the film’s name the first time in some crazy grapevine according to which it had Shilpa Shetty acting(!) in it!
On retrospection, I remember we, at the Bangalore Film Society(BFS) discussing the probable winners at Cannes(where the film lost to Ken Loach’s The wind that shakes the barley…..
“I somehow like Inarritu’s Bhelpuri Cinema, so I have no qualms about Babel pickin best director.But another funny thing was the ensemble casts gettin both actors and actresses trophies. Imagine if we start the practice in India and Godforbidden LOC Kargil wins it!!!! They would have to hand 36 Filmfare trophies to the cast (unless more actors come to claim it!)Moreover, in future, why the hell would someone pay a fortune to big stars to act in their films, they will simply say, “here is a package deal for your entire family! We will all fly to Antarctica in a start to finish (!) shoot, and I want all 27 of you in the cast, kids (born n unborn-highly unlikely considering the ‘cold n polar’ chemistry in the ‘poles’) included.” One guy who would be happy with ensembles getting these awards would be our very own shaadi specialist Sooraj Barjatya, who will finally say with pride, “see, Salman got an award for best acting, does not matter if he had to share it with Tuffy the Puppy!”olright olright, I think I need an award now to shut up.”
(quoted from a previous post on http://cinemaalive.blogspot.com/)
Tushar how is b’lore film society doing?
Do u know this kid who made a feature mixing fight club with amelie?
i forgot his name.
Anyways BABEL had great highs & great lows.
The Mexican story was really really lame & made up by the directors standards. That story killed the movie for me.
The Japanese story was the best. I hope she wins the best supporting actress. I think she will.
The whole co incidence thing was taken too far this time. he should get off it & make other films.
21 Grams was also overdone. The camera shakes so much. It was cinematic Masturbation. Look i’m so cool. Look i’m directing kind of film. Seen more in the independent film world. But i think He is getting trapped in his image.
I loved the silent part in the movie. I think that whole Ecstasy trip was done really well. Usually drug trips on movies are overdone. The other movies with great drug trips i can remember -
TRAINSPOTTING
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
EASY RIDER