This review contains spoilers
When a director is stuck with a single idea and keeps making movies around it over and over again, you know he is going to jump the shark once. Which is what happens with Alejandro González Iñárritu and his latest venture, Babel. Labeling Babel as third part of a “trilogy” (previous two being Amore Perros and 21 Grams) serves as an easy excuse for Alenjandro to explain now off repeated theme of multiple-separate-story-threads-linked-together-by-some-connection in his movies. While it worked well with Amore Perros and 21 Grams, the same cannot be said about Babel. Whats worse, the “link” that holds one of the stories is so ridiculously meek and unconvincing that it almost feels pretentious and nothing more than a sorry excuse to tell a story that has no relation to the central plot (if there was one). Babel is one of those movies which had a such big potential to be a great movie, if the director and writer not got so carried away by their idea, their budget and common sense.
To say something about the story, well, first of all, everyone in Babel is unhappy, dejected, pained, isolated and lonely. And just plain stupid.
And here’s how these stupid people act in stories of despair and hopelessness, making the audience wonder whether they themselves are stupid and in a hopeless situation of having to endure this movie:
Story 1
Somewhere in villages of Morocco, a goat herder gives his two teenage kids a rifle to safe guard the goats and kill the Jackals that could attack the goats. The Jackasses don’t manage to kill any Jackals, but wind up shooting an American Jackass’s wife traveling in a tourist bus. The stupid kid’s experiment of checking how far the bullet travels in empty air ends up going too far for their liking.
Story 2
The American idiot and his wife are surviving a difficult marriage, while their kids back home enjoy the company of a MnM coated sugar nanny of Mexican origin. While traveling in the bus through an arid desert, this wife ends up getting shot by the kids. Bradd Pitt, looking suitably old and pained is shocked and despaired when his wife (Cate Blanchett) gets shot. He immediately sets things into motion which initially look promising, but as the movie progresses borderlines senselessness. So much so that when his bus-mates desert him, you almost feel happy for them. The American Idiot must take his wife to a village, where his wife must rest, and they must wait for an ambulance to come by. Never mind that they had a huge bus at their disposal. They must wait for a giddy ambulance, which may or may not come.
But because he is an American idiot, things don’t go as planned. The US Embassy gets involved, and the shooting incident quickly snowballs as a “terror attack” against Americans, increasing the misery and hopelessness the couple find themselves in.
Story 3
The nanny needs to take the day off as it is her son’s wedding in Mexico; but this unforeseen accident has put her in a quandary, as the parents are not going to be back before she can leave to Mexico. What must she do? She must take the kids to Mexico, where they get to see a rather ebullient marriage complete with songs and dances. Of course all is not well here either. So instead of heeding her intelligent son’s advice to stay back for a few more hours till sunlight, she forces her drunk nephew to take her back across the US border.
The US border as we know is not a nice place to be. Not pleasant if you are a Mexican. Bad if you have a drunk driver at helm. Worse if you are with American kids in your back seats. Terrible if those kids have taken on their parent’s gene and are as stupid. And incredibly stupid when the drunk driver runs through the border, and then decides to ditch nanny and her two sweeties in a desert. Sigh.
Story 4
So far so good. I wouldn’t have minded it, if the above three stories was all the movie was about. Heck, I would call the movie great then. But in his dream of layering the story across several continents, the director takes us to Tokyo, where we must endure a deaf-mute girl and her starving hormones. So while we wait for this girl to fulfill her passions and get laid, we must endure her journey through loneliness, her temper tantrum, her rejection by other boys because she’s deaf-mute, being drugged by street jerks who want nothing of her except to lay her (and pray, why does she reject?), and finally trying to seduce a policeman by telling him an emotionally charged story about her mother’s death (so much for seduction), and then taking off her clothes hoping to catch the policeman’s fancy. All of it, makes this Japanese soft core story the longest running of all the four stories, and four times more boring. And did I mention already that this deaf mute and her friends are so stupid anyways, that for once I thanked my stars that these characters didn’t need to talk.
And the connection? The Japanese sex starved idiot’s father gave the rifle as a token of thanks to his guide during his hunting trip in Morocco, who then sold it to the goat herd, who then gave it to his kids to kill Jackals, who then went and shot the American woman in the bus, thereby ruining and changing a Mexican momma’s life forever.
Even the butterfly effect may not have such dire consequences.
The problems with Babel are many. And I must crib on all of them. For a start, with a running length of 2 hours 22 minutes, the movie plays on and on like soap opera unwilling to end. Whats worse, its the least interesting story of the Japanese girl that gets the maximum footage. If the movie had trimmed up and not included the Japanese story line at all (and thereby cutting a good 30-35 minutes), the rest of the stories were actually handled pretty decently. Heck, there is an absolute stunner of a scene towards the end involving Brad Pitt which forces its audience to refocus on the entire structure and time line of the movie. However that scene comes way too late, after way too much of borefest has passed by and at a point when the audience is looking at the exit door impatiently.
Secondly, why are lonely, pained and dejected people also stupid generally? Are we as audience supposed to sympathize and empathize with their situation, or grin at their stupidity? Take for instance, the middle eastern kids. Should we as audience empathize about their sorry situation of having shot an American woman (no less!), or just plain smirk at their stupidity? Or the Japanese idiot – what the hell was she thinking? That she could get a man in bed by talking about her mothers suicide? Or for Brad Pitt’s character – who has a huge 32 seater bus at his disposal (and less than half occupied), but keeps waiting for a Ambulance to come by for more than a day. And makes his fellow bus mates and the bus wait. Why must we as audience wallow in his pain when this character acts stupid and not use the bus and get to hospital once his wife has been stitched and not bleeding? Or this Mexican woman who seems idiotically frantic about getting back to America so that the kids don’t miss their soccer practice, and then when she’s left stranded in the desert, asks the kids to stay together while she finds help. And pray, after being given such precise instructions to stay put together, why must these pesky kids also display their stupidity by disappearing?
At some point I wished Babel were a horror movie. At least then, the character’s stupidity would still be reasonable.
That is not to say all is not well with Babel. Babel is supported by good acting from a few actors. Brad Pitt carries of his role amicably. Cate Blanchett had nothing, absolutely nothing to do in the movie except crib and suitably whine whenever the camera focuses on her blood stained neck. The middle eastern kids decidedly looked stupid, and act with justified competence. (Eh, what does my last sentence mean?! Do I have a career in professional review writing?). The less said about the Japanese eggworm the better. The visuals are great.
Here’s a funny part. For a movie that is laced in stupidity, there are actually some brilliant scenes which show off cultural norms and misgivings between different cultures beautifully, something the director is known of. The initial fear of an alien doctor treating his wife in some remote village in a foreign is well shot and acted by Pitt and Cate. Or the American kids when they discover Mexico and its way of merry making, which is at once too alien to them, and equally as inviting. Or a scene depicting media obsession with anything American in a Japanese bar, where woman on TV news talks of the American shot in Morocco and how it ended happily for “America”. Unfortunately, such scenes are few and sparse, and while singularly standing out as great scenes, collectively have no purpose in the movie.
All in all – Babel is my pick for the Oscars. The folks at Oscars will love such movies. Unfortunately, I, a mere mortal, having paid 10$ for the ticket (unlike the Oscar committee who’ll get free gifts and presents to like this movie) will not recommend you, my reader to watch this movie. Not even on Netflix.
Enough of my babble. 2 stars. Not recommended.