Review of Babel (2008) by Tony B — 15 Dec 2011

A very slow moving, multi-layered, multi-racial drama about human nature and a connected series of tragic mistakes that affect the lives of people on three continents is an ambitious idea, but never something that was going to particularly grab you for over two hours.

This has flashes of brilliance in fits and starts, struggling to join together as a cohesive whole. Don't imagine this is a Brad/Cate film either, those two Hollywood megastars merely form part of an ensemble, getting as much or indeed less screen time than various others linked in the puzzle - director Iñárritu creating a complex web of cause and effect between a distant couple on holiday in Morocco, their children's Mexican nanny at a family wedding, a Moroccan family they come into deadly contact with, and the deaf daughter of the Japanese hunter who sold the Moroccan something crucial.

Of all four narratives, the Japanese one is the most effective - a quietly tragic story of a repressed young woman with a disability trying to deal with her mother's suicide; and the Mexican the weakest - an at times silly comment on illegal Mexican immigrant policy.

The rest play the middle, as indeed does the film - the odd point of drama undercut by slow pacing and the problem of snapping to less interesting narratives at crucial points. A brave experiment then, subtly written with some fine acting, but not altogether what it wanted to be.