Review of Babel (2006) by Earl H — 30 Nov 2010
Overreaching drama that intercuts four stories, two of which aren't really intercut-able. It is an interesting and frustrating editorial style that Inarritu uses because this parallel lives thing is interesting in essence, but he also plays with time too, so what he intercuts isn't always happening concurrently.
If he cut this together as a linear work then the Japanese and Mexican parts of the story would be pretty boring (I felt the same way about 21 grams), so he imposes a pretension to certain parts of the story that lift them out of the mundane - it's really pretty clever I suppose.
Anyway, in a film that is essentially a thematic warning of guns, it does have some extraordinary moments of touching drama and the Moroccan part of the story is the most interesting for sure. My biggest problem with it is that the use of the 'connected' Japanese and Mexican stories is trite.
This review of Babel (2006) was written by Earl H on 30 Nov 2010.
Babel has generally received positive reviews.
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