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Babel review
:. Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
:. Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett
:. Running Time: 2:23
:. Year: 2006
:. Country: USA
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The champion of chorale structure cinema returns here with Babel, an ambitious political fable based on lack of communication.
According to the Bible, Babel was a celebrated tower erected by men who were culturally united in order to reach Paradise. Irritated by this enterprise, God destroyed the building and condemned humanity to speak in different languages. Incapable of communicating with each other, since then man has consequently known division. The Mexican director updates the biblical myth by transposing it on three distinct continents. The first segment takes place in the United States, on the edge of the Mexican border.
A nanny cares for the children of a couple traveling in Morocco. As her son is getting married in Mexico, she illegally embarks on a traumatic journey with the children. In the Moroccan segment featuring an American couple (Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt), the wife is accidentally wounded by a bullet shot by some kids. The weapon? A rifle, offered to a local guide by a Japanese tourist. And on to Japan, in a parallel story the turmoil of a deaf and mute teenager who has a conflicted relationship with her father. All things considered, the story engages with its shot, but never reaches its target.
A pure screenwriter film, Babel sins precisely through its artificial device and its permanent blackmail of emotion. Too manufactured, the writing compartmentalizes the humanistic and political propositions and reduces the film to a simple stylistic demonstration. Nonetheless the film knows how to be loved, and won't let go of your hand, for fear that you miss the moral of the story. In other words, the masterly proof of incommunicability and intolerance among people.
Everything in the film is geared toward the Third World. From the precarious situation of undocumented Mexicans which finds a direct echo with the destitute Moroccan families, couples in crisis, dysfunctional families and the shadow of terrorism hang on this sum with clear stakes: to embrace all contemporary pains and to exonerate the affected heroes. Pontificating to the extreme, Babel does not need divine intervention to see its beautiful work bury itself: it crumbles right under our impotent eyes.
Sandrine Marques
Translated into English by Anji Milanovic
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