Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, and Rinko Kikuchi
Brad Pitt stars in Babel. (Courtesy photo)
An effective way to pull the wool over someone’s eyes is to use steel wool. That’s the approach Alejandro González Iñárritu seems to have taken with his new film Babel. It gives the viewer every indication that it’s got something meaningful to say, then covers up for its hollowness with sheer cruelty. Babel breaks one of the most fundamental contracts between movie and audience: the film should give back in kind whatever it asks of the viewer. Babel asks us to endure 140 minutes of nasty coincidences and lethal misunderstandings in order to tell us that people have trouble communicating with each other. Oh, really? Golly jeepers, thanks for that insight. As a bonus, we find out that white Americans always get the best deal. Illuminating! And if you really want to go into detail, Iñárritu makes the point that Asians come in second, Mexicans third, and incestuous Morrocan goatherds last.
Iñárritu has said he wishes to show the world in all its naked honesty, yet he presents a film devoid of one of humanity’s essential ingredients: humor. I mean any levity at all. It’s a simple thing that separates great dramas from mediocre ones. But in this case, the divide is much bigger.
Four stories are told at once: wealthy American couple Richard and Susan (Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett), reeling from the recent death of their infant son, travel by bus through Morroco. Susan is hit by a phantom bullet, and suddenly the two are trapped in a tiny Morrocan village seemingly cut off from the civilized world. The bullet came from the rifle of two young goatherds, Ahmed (Said Tarchani) and Yussef (Boubker Ait El Caid). They meant only to test the distance their new rifle could fire, but end up sending their poor family on a spiral into tragedy. In case that’s not enough, you should know that their sister Zohra knowingly takes off her clothes in front of the spying Yussef. Far away, Richard and Susan’s nanny, Amelia, (Adrianna Barraza) totes their two children from San Diego to Tijuana for her son’s wedding. Driving them is Amelia’s loose-cannon nephew Santiago (Gael García Bernal). Their late-night attempt to cross the border back into the U.S. leads to, you guessed it, tragedy.
In the most disparate—and most welcome—sequence, deaf mute Cheiko (Rinko Kikuchi) wanders through Tokyo attempting desperately to make meaningful contact. It’s the only segment of the film that isn’t fashioned with the muzzle of a gun, and though it can’t maintain itself, the ambition here is laudable.
The point where Babel lost me for good came when Cheiko finds herself in a Tokyo nightclub. The music is thumping, the crowd is gyrating, and Iñárritu cuts to her point of view. Suddenly the image is completely silent. Huh? In the body of a girl who has been deaf her whole life? In a nightclub where the bass is so strong it would literally vibrate through her body? This type of nonsense is hard to stomach in so-called grown-up movies. But the movie attains truly absurd levels in the border sequence. I hate to spoil all the fun, so I won’t go into detail. Suffice it to say that the characters behave in ways that are motivated by nothing outside of their puppeteer’s desire to make a bad situation worse.
I’m not being completely fair to Mr. Iñárritu, because he shared screenwriting duties with Guillermo Arragia. Iñárritu and Arriaga co-wrote Iñárritu’s previous two acclaimed films, Amoros Perros and 21 Grams. I haven’t seen either film, and maybe all of this reaction speaks to some fear of mine about facing grim reality, but I just watched two marvelous films made by Iñárritu’s friends and countrymen Alfonzo Cuaron and Guillermo del Toro, and found both of them to be absolutely mesmerizing. Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth also ask a lot of their audience, but those films bring with them great rewards. Cuaron and del Toro take responsibility for the brutality they present.
Iñárritu’s facility with the medium is not in question: he has a power to his filmmaking that is undeniable. He has a great sense for small, very human moments. And he has drawn very impressive performances from his huge, wildly varied cast.
There are two nominees for best supporting actress in the cast, and both are richly deserved. Rinko Kikuchi gives an enigmatic, brave performance as the troubled young woman. And though her storyline threatens to undermine her, Adrianna Barraza is absolutely wonderful as Amelia. It is affecting to see the contrast between Amelia’s personas in the U.S. and in Mexico. Gael García Bernal’s role is actually not that large, but the hugely charismatic actor (Y Tu Mama Tambien) need only make the decision, and I daresay he could become one of the biggest stars in the world.
Pitt and Blanchett are both committed to their suffering roles, though Blanchett especially has trouble finding the honesty in her thinly drawn character. Boubker Ait El Caid is memorable as Yussef, the youngest child in the family of goat farmers, who is also somehow the most aware. It’s an impressive performance from the first-time actor.
Iñárritu falls for the same trap that nabs most aspiring 15-year-old songwriters: tragedy is easy. If one’s goal is merely to elicit an emotional response from your audience, regardless of meaning, nothing is simpler than stringing together horrific events. Iñárritu commits completely to the misery, but he leaves out the hard part: the point. It’s not enough to give your title a Bible reference. You need to do the work and find your epiphany. Iñárritu is content to lay out the misery and leave it us to build something meaningful out of it, but it is definitely not enough.
Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California, and works for the Cartoon Network. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for manyyears.
