Babel Reviews

Amazingly powerful movie filled with multiple themes and cultures crossed due to its multi-story narrative structure.

Babel is a long film, very long, and full of tension, very full. There's also a little of confusion, but it's the title itself to warn you about that. But above all, Babel is a fascinating movie that digs into human condition bringing it back to the origins, to that Tower of Babel where people spoke different languages but shared the same feelings of the whole mankind: fear, love, sexuality, the restlessness of youth, despair, relationship between parents and children. In four places of the world, four stories are intertwined like threads of a one only texile, thanks to a frantic direction and good actors: not only Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in their desperate situation but - for example - Rinko Kikuchi that doesn't say a word but tells so much. Moreover (but I think it's just a personal note) in that alternating of different languages there's such a musicality that no other movie has. Eventually, Babel is a real pleasure for eyes and ears.

"Babel" is a heavy, long movie, but it is quite well done, engaging, and worth sitting through at least once. Everyone in the movie does an excellent job, though Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's parts pretty much could have been played by anyone, and maybe they would have appealed better, shone more, or had the quality that was just missing against everyone else, and the very powerful, well written storyline. Sometimes movies with interlocking stories just fall flat, aren't written well, but that is definitely not the case here.

That all being said, I think one watch in a lifetime is enough for this movie. It's so long, I don't know if I could have the patience to sit through it a second time.

Since 'Amores Perros' (which is one of my all-time favorites) , I try to catch every movie directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. I had some rather high expectations for this one and, fortunately, it didn't disappoint me. It is rather interesting that out of the 3 major Mexican releases coming out in 2006 (this movie, 'Children of Men' and 'El laberinto del fauno'), Inarritu's movie turned out to be my favorite one whereas 'Children' and 'Labyrinth' got more love from the rest of the world. Basically, it is once again another hyperlink tale (multiple & parallel story lines are linked with each other) written by Guillermo Arriaga (who also wrote 'Amores Perros' and '21 grams' which were also hyperlink tales). You could fear that the gimmick is getting a little tiresome by now, but it wasn't, at least, not for me. Indeed, the directing was awesome, the cast (including Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in top shape) was really good and, above all, the story was just fascinating to behold. In the contrary to many other hyperlink movies, there were only 4 storylines, they were all very well developed and they all worked very well. To conclude, I really loved it and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are fan of Inarritu's work like me.

In Alejandro Iñarritu’s cinematic world, the order of things is subverted. Time is chopped and events are shuffled. Cars become, not media of safe transport, but catalysts of tragedy. And one fatal shot from a rifle becomes the means to salvation.Such is the case with his film, BABEL, the third of his trilogy of heart-crunchers, first of which was Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch) and then 21 Grams.

In BABEL, just as in the former two, various lives from three different places intersect, but this time in a shooting accident involving two Moroccan herd boys and an American wife (Cate Blanchett) and her American husband (a gray-haired, 10 years older Brad Pitt)on a bus tour around exotic Morocco. The two Moroccan boys engage in a fatal target practice on a passing bus to test the range of their new rifle and accidentally shots a sleeping American woman aboard (Blanchett). The reverberations of that one rifle shot spans miles across seas: In San Diego, a Mexican nanny is forced to take along her American ward of two blond kids to her son’s wedding in Mexico. Meanwhile, in Japan, a deaf-mute high school girl struggles to feel wanted and understood by normal boys her age.

BABEL is a film about the very thing that binds us: language. But Iñarritu challenges the notion of language, both spoken and signed, as effective conveyors of the message. It also serves to destroy, to create barriers, to deafen ears. What he offers instead is this: A bullet communicates better than words. It is not made to destroy lives but to destroy the veneer of people’s indifference. In its process of destruction, it exposes people’s fears and hopes.

Here, Iñarritu delivers.

O filme tem uma história boa - o clássico caso do filme que
conta tantas histórias diferentes, mas que no final você
descobre que há uma conexão entre todas. Fiquei intrigada
durante boa parte do filme, aquele desespero em saber o que
aconteceria nas próximas cenas, mas tudo acompanhado daquela
certeza de que haveria algo que colocaria todos os personagens
do filme bem próximos pelos acontecimentos. Apesar de tudo isso,
a direção não deixa a desejar. Nota 6.

I loved the 'foreign' story lines in this film; but found myself bored out of my skin in the Pitt/Blanchett segments.

I cant pin point exactly what made these bits so dull; if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it was Cate Blanchett. I think Cate has a tendency to become easily dull and vapid in any role. I fear she's so used to playing the 'virgin queen' she'll never act well again (if she ever did).

Aside from the sparodic moments of the dull american storyline, I was totally encaptivated by the storylines of the 2 morrocan brothers, the mexican nanny and the Japanese, deaf girl. A whole movie dedicated to each of of these would have been amazing; but Pitt and Blanchett kept dragging it back to 'Hollywood'...and it didnt work.

I still give this film and 8/10, purely due to how interesting the other stroylines were. But I think Babel has taught us that independent films are independent films and hollywood is hollywood; and never the twain shall meet.

Alejandro González Iñárritu never fails to impress me with his knack for weaving together disparate storylines. Amores Perros and 21 Grams have both taken pride of place on my DVD shelves for a while now, but Babel I would say is his most ambitious effort to date.

Is it his best? I'll need a second watch to fully decide. However, my main doubts after one viewing all lay within the Japanese section of the film. It felt like it was there to serve as filler, really wasn't all that essential to the plot. Japan, compared to the other two stories characters, depictions of the countries customs and cultural surroundings seemed a sight more stereotypical and cliched. Nevertheless all three stories did leave an impact. Hard hitting, well acted, socially conscious drama at its best. A good conclusion to the Iñárritu/Arriaga trilogy, now to watch them back to back.

Por empezar, es eterna. Yo entiendo que quizas este acostumbrada a ver cine yankee y sus tiempos cortos. Pero cual era la necesidad de ver a un marroquí masturbandose pensando en su hermana? o a una americana con un tiro en el cuello en una aldea africana meando mientras besa a su marido?

Entiendo el mensaje. Entiendo su link al titulo. Entiendo lo que el director quiso hacer. Pero desde mi punto de vista, le salió mal. Las historias fueron demasiado forzadas para cruzarse (el japones le regalo un rifle a un guia? c'mooon) y el único momento en el que sentí algo mas que aburrimiento fue al ver la angustia de la mexicana cuando tuvo que dejar a los nenes en el desierto. El resto.. aburrido.

Además, como es que los unicos personajes con "final feliz" con la pareja americana y sus hijos?
Demasiado facil...

This film is cathartic.