With a plot structure not unlike his previous Amores Perros or 21 Grams, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga have created Babel, the final act of a trilogy about the human condition. With seemingly unrelated characters and storylines that gradually merge, it is as ambitious as a narrative can get, and the filmmakers pull it off with great aplomb.
Four parallel stories take place within days if not hours of each other. In Morocco, the father of a goat herding family buys a rifle from a neighbor. Set to guard the flock from predators, his two sons decide to do some target practice. As a tour bus happens by, a single shot rings out, and a careless act will create havoc and distress for innocent victims and have severe repercussions for others.
In the bus, an American couple, Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett), are having a marital crisis when all of a sudden their world is turned upside down. The tour bus stops at a remote village as the passengers begin to stir and fear for their own safety. As the Moroccan police investigate the incident, Richard is desperate to save the life of his wife amid primitive surroundings in a foreign land.
The couple’s two children in California are under the care of their nanny, Amelia (Adriana Barraza), who is anxious to go to her son’s impending wedding. After failing to find suitable caregivers to watch over the children, she takes them with her to Mexico. Escorted by her volatile nephew Santiago (Gael Garcia Bernal), they drive to a festive wedding ceremony and reception. Afterwards, they are stopped at a border checkpoint where events turn nightmarish.
In Japan, a lonely teenaged girl, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) who is deaf, hangs with her other deaf friends and dreams of flirting and connecting with a male even if it means compromising her dignity. Her father, Yasujiro (Koji Yakusho) is inadequate as a parent since his wife died under obscure circumstances. As detectives want to question Yasujiro, Cheiko is smitten by a younger detective and unleashes a torrent of passion and secrets.
The final moments of the film are memorable as each storyline becomes clearer and potent in their revelations and truths. Time slips back and forth and certain events catch up to the others (Christopher Nolan’s Momento comes to mind). The threads that connect the different stories are not as obvious as one might expect and when they do become apparent, they hold emotional meaning. What is so remarkable is how a seemingly innocent prank sets off a chain reaction of angst and responsibility.
The film does not sermonize but rather it presents the events as they happen albeit in an incongruent time frame. You experience life and its effects on other events and people. The director and writer try to depict people like you or me with the same needs or longings. With a setting that reaches the far-flung corners (Japan, Mexico or Morocco) of the world, Inarritu has forced his audience to go with him and face a myriad of characters that speak English, Japanese, Spanish, Arabic, Berber, or French! Yet when we get to know these disparate individuals and their situations, we begin to empathize and care for them despite their faults or shortcomings. Although the title has biblical references with its different languages, these stories share common emotional bonds that transcend mere dialects. This is a film that could easily play anywhere in the world and still be affecting.
The international cast melds amateurs with seasoned veterans and the honest performances are completely captivating and affecting. I dare anyone to pick out the professional actors from the non professionals (save Pitt and Blanchett). This use of unknowns adds to the believability of the whole storyline. (It is ironic that Michael Pena plays a border policeman; he was featured in last year’s similarly structured Crash-a coincidence perhaps?)
There are painful, agonizing moments where human suffering is brought with unflinching, explicit realism to an almost unbearable level. This film presents characters with all their strengths and weaknesses and it does so unsparingly. Sometimes the punishment or consequences unfairly outweigh the crime or the mistake. The brothers who watch over their father’s goats must face their own culpability and ugly family secrets that threaten to destroy their way of life. There are Richard and Susan who are at the center or eye of a growing hurricane of life’s cruel randomness and must depend on strangers for survival. A jaunt across a Mexican border turns ugly.
Things are not wrapped up nicely, and several plot threads are left hanging and open-ended on purpose. The marital problems of Richard and Susan are never clearly delineated and their relationship gets short shrift even as they go through a harrowing event. The music is somber and spare. The imagery is powerful despite the handheld documentary feel. The scenes of Japanese nightlife are vivid and disturbing in their portrayal of urban youth.
Babel is about how families are torn apart and come together. It is also about children. It could be your children or mine or the world’s children. There are some significant issues (racial tension, illegal immigrants, adolescent yearnings, perceptions of a foreign country, and the arrogance of the ‘ugly American’) the filmmakers touch upon and you wish they had gone even farther with the material, but you are glad they went as far as they did. Babel is a film that this reviewer has no desire to sit through again, but having gone through it once, it is a unique, remarkable experience. This is an imperfect, significant film and destined for major Oscar nominations.
*** ½ out of **** stars
No comments:
Post a Comment