Directed by:
Alejandro González IñárrituScreenplay:
Guillermo ArriagaCinematography:
Rodrigo PrietoComposer:
Gustavo SantaolallaCast:
Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Peter Wight, Harriet Walter, Trevor Martin, Matyelok Gibbs, André Oumansky, John O'Mahony, Adriana Barraza, Elle Fanning (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
In the remote sands of the Moroccan desert, a rifle shot rings out - detonating a chain of events around the world that will link an American tourist couple's (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) frantic struggle to survive, two Moroccan boys involved in an accidental crime, a nanny illegally crossing into Mexico with two American children and a Japanese teen rebel whose father is sought by the police in Tokyo. Separated by clashing cultures and sprawling distances, each of these four disparate groups of people are nevertheless hurtling towards a shared destiny of isolation and grief. (Umbrella Entertainment)
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Reviews (13)
For me, this film by Alejandro González Iñárritu is right between Amores Perros and 21 Grams. Once again, the director relies on several stories in which the characters' fates intertwine more than one would expect. And he does it that again, but, unlike 21 Grams, where I liked all the stories, the one with the Japanese girl didn't really fit. I had the same dilemma with Amores Perros, where I knocked 1* off the rating because of the hysterical ex-model. Half of the film is based on an excellent sequence of images, accompanied by a wonderful score (deserved Oscar!), often better than the redundant and boring script. As for the acting, I was most impressed with Adriana Barraza and (despite my issues with her story) Rinko Kikuchi. The rest of the cast was also good, but these two performances just stood out. So, I would like to say that Babel is a film that is definitely not lacking in quality. Its weakness may have been its running time, but that's up to each individual. I probably wouldn't watch it a second time, but who knows? All in all, a better 4*.
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Alejandro González Iñárritu has reached the zenith of his mosaic-laden journey. I would like to say that he took the best from Amores Perros and 21 Grams and combined them together, but that is not the case. Still, Babel remains the director's best work. He managed to avoid a bit of the unfortunate confusion from his previous film, endowed all the storylines with emotional richness, and mixed everything in a way that I could barely catch my breath right from the first second, for over two hours. And it wouldn't be Iñárritu if there wasn't some message present in his film. Babel almost screams for humanity, solidarity, and help, which in some moments brings tears to the viewer's eyes, and in others simply pins them to their seats.
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Iñarritu abandons the time fragmentation of 21 Grams and, as in his first film, tells several intertwining stories. The Mexican episode is probably the weakest, with relatively little emotional impact, while the Japanese one seems to have fallen out of another film, but thanks to the likeable lead actress it’s one of the most enjoyable. Great emotions take place in Morocco, with the story of a shepherd and his sons that escalates with great urgency at the end, while the fate of the injured American woman is gripping in places thanks to the great performances of the central duo Pitt – Blanchett, whose circumstantially forced intimate moments are among the film's strongest. The Moroccan episodes are clearly worth 5*, the other two 3*, but if I had to compare, Iñárritu's previous 21 Grams had much more emotional charge overall, at least for me.
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Alejandro González Iñárritu stubbornly sticks to the refined style that appealed to so many viewers in his previous two films. I used to be a fan of Amores Perros, but I didn’t like that much the celebrated 21 Grams. I enjoyed Babel less than AP but more than 21 Grams. It’s a mosaic composed of three, and therefore four, stories. If they did away with the one about the whiny Japanese girl, the film would be less than two hours long and I would likely be a little more satisfied. I don’t mean by this that the Japanese story was uninteresting, no, but it’s so distant and with a different atmosphere, and it always distracted me from the dirty desert settings of Mexico and Morocco. Moreover, its connection with the other two stories is only symbolic.
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Babel floats stylishly on the surface, but it fails to go any deeper. The content of the two main storylines comes across as half-empty, and the third storyline, though it holds the strongest potential, doesn’t add anything to them. If I gave 21 Grams four stars, I have to stick with three in this case. Nice visuals, great atmospheric music and good actors aren’t everything. P.S. Chieko should have jumped.
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