Review of Babel (2006) by Edgar C — 07 Jul 2014

With a lot of Academy Award nominations lined up, Babel sounded like a film worth checking.

The problem with Babel is that it is a little too ambitious for its own good. It reveals director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu taking another step into films of a gritty nature with a complex structure. He has stepped up his game since 21 Grams because Babel is a far better film, and he manages to handle the drama of the story well enough so that it is effective and not melodramatic or overly sentimental. It has moments of being a little melodramatic, but as a whole it is an improvement. Yet the issue is that there is so much of Babel to take in. It has a lot of stories running simultaneously with some being interesting and others not so much. It is not really Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's fault because what he contributes to the film proves to mostly pay off in the sense that he manages to dramatise things fairly well and make Babel good from other perspectives, so the issue in the film really comes from the screenplay.

With films like Magnolia or The Hours which have multiple plotlines playing out against each other with some sort of connection, the stories have to remain interesting to keep viewers involved. While certain stories may not be as interesting as others, as long as they maintain a fairly consistent entertainment value. In Babel, there were few stories that really raised high enough for me to be able to enjoy the film. There was a lot of potential in the subject matter and some dedication from a powerful cast, but the issue was that the stories were not interesting enough for there to be three of them running with so many characters coming and going. I was primarily interested in the story relating to Morocco and the characters Yussef and Ahmed. But I found that it was worn down by all the other characters and subplots that began to dominate Babel more and more as it progressed. The story started out decent and then began to lose focus of what it was doing and where it was going, and therefore the viewers cannot be expected to do the same. I could not keep up with the story as much as I wanted to, and every time I tried I ended up distracted by attempting to figure out other things. The story set in Morocco is the high point of the film because it is interesting in terms of the many themes that it explores and the way that it does it, but unfortunately the best story of the film is overshadowed by the worst story. The worst story in Babel is the one set in Japan. The acting is no problem, but the nature of the story is not as gritty as the subject matter covered in Morocco and is rather a lot more melodramatic. It did not entertain me or have me thinking all that much, and while I did have an appreciation for the acting, it just was too boring. The story set in the United States and Mexico was not that interesting either, although the dramatic strength of the film was a lot more prevalent here than it was in Japan. All in all, the central theme in the film and the way that the characters are all victimised not by antagonists but simply by circumstance is interesting, but the fact is that each story has a different type of drama to it and the way that the film weaves back and forth between various tales ended up wearing me down. The slow pace of the film was already enough, but it was not made all that greater by the way that the stories could not keep themselves stimulating . Babel ends up being a melodramatic film which has its moments but cannot tie them up together well enough for them to be anything more than a series of loose ended vignettes in a film with a structure which Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu once again proves unable to tie together. He is getting better as a film director, but the material he is dealing with does not.

From a technical perspective however, Babel is terrific. The cinematography in the film is decent because it is constantly atmospheric. It avoids conventional routes and instead takes a more atmospheric path which leaves everything feeling a lot more realistic and less like a film. It all felt a lot more atmospheric than it could have been, and it captured everything so that it felt a lot more small scaled and character focused. What it captures is some diverse and beautiful scenery which further emphasises the legitimate nature of the film. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu manages to make Babel an appropriately stylish film, so he does exercise his ability to create memorable imagery.

The musical score was nice. It was subtle and gentle and played out consistently over the course of the film.

And when it comes down to the cast, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu manages to direct a large cast to powerful efforts.

All the actors in Babel are fairly impressive simply because the characters they portray feel truly genuine. The standouts amongst the cast are Adrianna Bararaza who makes a powerful supporting effort where she grips a lot of genuine emotion in her part and projects it with intense power, Rinko Kikuchi who performs in her part well by revealing a lot of emotional confusion as she develops and uses a lot of powerful physical acting, and both Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchini who make terrific debut performances.

Brad Pitt also gives a nice performance in a role which demands simply his humanity for the part, as well as Cate Blanchett who faces the same sort of role.

Elle Fanning provides a powerful supporting effort as well, and Michael Pena's brief role was a nice touch.

But despite a strong cast, some stylish direction from Alejandro Gonzalez and some decent moments, Babel ends up being too scattered and slow to really satisfy viewers who aren't big fans of sentimental melodrama and does not that much beyond wasting some good potential.