Review of Babel (2006) by Markb. — 05 Jan 2007

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros and 21 Grams, their best film) reunite again for this exceedingly well-made but punishing tower of human misery, misunderstanding and the consequences of making mind-roastingly terrible mistakes that, like Vittorio DeSica's neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief, is a film I'm glad I saw once.

..and ONLY once. Two Moroccan kids use a gun recently received as a gift in the worst possible way; parties directly or indirectly involved in the fallout include a U.S. couple (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) suddenly stranded in unfamiliar surroundings as they fight for life, a domestic (Adrianna Barraza) working here who hits an immigration wall when she decides to attend a wedding, and--most obscurely--a Japanese businessman and his deaf, seriously sexually disturbed teen daughter.

Like their other films (and Paul Haggis' Crash) this deals heavily with the capriciousness of both fate and human error; while reaching the perhaps inevitable conclusion that fortune often favors those who are already quite well-off (and American), it commendably doesn't try to score easy points with facile U.

S.-bashing. Equally notable is that, in keeping with its theme of people of many nations inextricably connected to one another by human experience but tragically separated by their inability to understand each other (which is actually an inversion of the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel, in which God punishes the nations of the world for attempting to form a common language and government, leaving Him out in the proceedings) Babel doesn't create any real villains.

There are no Iagos, Medeas or Stanley Kowalskis here acting out of pure evil, cruelty or psychopathic self-interest; at worst, there are just people in authority doing their jobs the best they can. I hope the Motion Picture academy of Arts and Sciences sees fit to look beyond the usual corral of science fiction/ action epics that usual fill the editing and sound effects categories and honor this film there: Inarritu's work with sound, especially in a sequence where the deaf girl enters a disco, is truly phenomenal.

However, despite all of Babel's excellences, its worldview is so unrelentingly bleak, and most of its stories play out that way, that I left the theater wanting as desperately to watch a musical or romantic comedy to cleanse the old palate as I'm beginning to think that Inarritu and Arriaga truly need to make one.