Posted by
Emmett of the Unblinking Eye on Thursday, October 26, 2006 7:05:37 PM
One of the toughest things to do in cinema is to mesh several disparate stories into one coherent and appealing film. When it works, as it did in
Sin City,
Pulp Fiction and
Crash, the results can be spectacular. When it doesn't, you get
Babel.
Now, don't get me wrong. There's a lot to be said for Babel. It is clearly An Important Film. It sports An Important Director,
Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won the Best Director award at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and who previously directed the estimable
Amores Perros and
21 Grams. It is stark in its cinematography, and its location shots are impressive. And it has A Great Cast, headed by Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt. You can literally feel the directive, "This is a film that you
must like". Unfortunately, the story undermines the intent.
Basically,
Babel involves three separate stories that you know (or hope) will inevitably mesh together. Pitt and Blanchett play a troubled couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert (for reasons that even Blanchett can't quite understand) who are attacked by believed terrorists. Meanwhile, a nanny/housekeeper in San Diego is desperate to go to Mexico for her son's wedding, but is saddled with her duties to two young children for whom she is responsible (any guesses as to where their parents are?). And a DHH teenager in Japan with an active libido, perhaps trauma-induced, must deal with her isolation, her father, and the suicide of her mother.
What do these three story lines have in common? As it turns out, not much. While each would have made a nice, tight little movie on their own, they lose there power when patched together -- and patched together is what they seem. The connection between the Japanese teenager and the other stories is tenuous at best, and although her story is the most compelling, and leaves us with the most unanswered questions, it simply slows the movie down. And at 142 minutes, slow is not what you are looking for.
So should you see it? Since it will probably be bandied about for Academy Award consideration, you may feel left out or bad if you don't. Then again, you may well feel bad if you do. Particularly if you belong to PETA, or like chickens (if you see the movie, you'll understand).