Movie Review: Babel

Babel

Paramount Vantage

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu



Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu really digs vehicular disaster. Maybe a little too much.

First there was “Amores Perros,” his 2000 debut—a brilliant, difficult movie about the intersecting lives led by victims of a car crash. “21 Grams,” his ambitious first Hollywood film, came in 2003, overwrought and under-felt. Like “Amores Perros,” it followed several fractured lives thrown together following a deadly hit-and-run auto accident.

Now there’s “Babel,” which strays—slightly—from the car mishap scenario. It examines the struggles of those affected by a bullet that hits an American tourist on a Moroccan tour bus.

This thematic repetition is a bit distressing, not necessarily because the random-people-thrown-together scenario is so well-worn, but rather because Iñárritu is running out of things to say with it. The title alludes to the biblical parable of the Tower of Babel, and, fittingly, the trials of all the main characters largely revolve around their inability to communicate.

Susan (Cate Blanchett) and Richard (Brad Pitt), the wounded tourist and her husband, can’t find a phone that will get through to the American embassy and are divided from the locals by a language barrier. Their Mexican nanny is frustrated in her attempts to explain herself to the U.S. border patrol after she illegally leaves the country with Susan’s kids. The Moroccan boys who fired on the bus during a deadly game of sibling one-upmanship can’t justify their actions to their parents or the provincial police who hunt them. Iñárritu also introduces us to Chieko, the deaf-mute Japanese teenager whose absurdly tangential connection to the events in Morocco inexplicably serves as the movie’s narrative climax.

Luckily, Iñárritu’s characters don’t have to talk much. Blanchett, as the wounded tourist, doesn’t get much dialogue to show off her American accent. She mainly just bleeds, although she does occasionally moan.

The not-quite-convincingly-graying Pitt likewise has little to do other than alternately bristle and cower. The usually charismatic Gael García Bernal (“The Science of Sleep”) is unfortunately given only a peripheral role.

Iñárritu tries to underscore his miscommunication trope by riling up characters too quickly, and without much cause. As a result, interaction between characters never feels entirely authentic and the message is undermined.

Like his characters, Iñárritu’s no good at telling, but he’s wonderful when it comes to showing. Veteran cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto moves the camera dexterously from the bare windblown deserts of Mexico and Morocco to congested Tokyo interiors, squeezing desolation and beauty out of both.

In the movie’s most original, riveting sequence, we follow Chieko as she drops ecstasy in a park and dances with a group of boys in a packed discotheque. It’s disorienting, it’s exhilarating, and it’s terrifying with both strobe lights and Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September” pulsing explosively. It’s masterfully shot and edited, and is probably one of the most accomplished, thrilling bits of cinema that American theaters will see this year.

But these are ten minutes out of 140, and it does little to move the film forward. Chieko’s story feels tacked-on, like it was a short film that was only included because Iñárritu lacked confidence in the rest of “Babel.”

In his prior two movies, the collisions were accidental, and that’s why they were exciting. Here, the characters’ worlds are hermetic. Iñárritu needs to show us that the film’s varied cultures have something to say to each other. He gives us a valiant effort but ultimately fails—the connections are too contrived and meaningless to pay anything more than lip service to the idea of a united humanity.

Bottom Line: Frustratingly reticent. It’s a beautiful film, but the cat’s got Iñárritu’s tongue.

—Reviewer Jake G. Cohen can be reached at jgcohen@fas.harvard.edu.