Babel

Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA / Mexico, 2006
2.5 out of 4 stars

I liked this film, but it didn’t really work and it was not a success. The subject of the film is an attack upon two American tourists, played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, but neither actor is really the “star” of the piece; if anything, the film revolves around them while marginalizing them as subjects, in order to focus more on subjects that are more typically marginalized; in this case, families in Morocco, Mexico, and Japan who go through trauma as a result of what has happened. Actually, scratch Japan off that list, because the story that takes place there, while arresting, has only a shallow connection at best to the rest of the story. This would be fine, were it not that the other stories are very closely interconnected, and that there doesn’t even seem to be a thematic connection in this case.

I think that there is a clear and useful message in this film, and I do like how Iñárritu showcases the people on the outskirts that suffer as a result of the trials of the privileged, rather than making the white folks the POV characters, as would occur in a single-narrative film. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel like he was making all these stories as one film because no one would give him funding for any one of them by itself; I would think that this has to be the explanation for the Japan story, but I have heard that at least one of his earlier films is a bit like this as well, although not on such an international scale. I do think that there needs to be some real questions asked as to whether this hodgepodge narrative, fused with the Hollywood “message” picture, really works, especially as it is becoming an annual occurrence.

Source: Paramount 35mm print
30 December, 4:10 PM