Babel

I finally saw Babel last night. I guess you could say I was disappointed. I had incredibly high hopes for this movie. I was anticipating it greatly. But I will explain.

Babel is a international tale, four stories, all connected in some way. There is Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett, a married couple who just recently had a baby die of SIDS, and are trying to work through their problems by taking a trip to Morocco. There are Moroccan farmer boys that are given a rifle to use against jackals. There is the nanny of Pitt and Blanchett's kids, who is trying to get to her sons wedding in Mexico, but cannot find someone to watch over the kids. And there is a deaf Japanese teenager who is upset over her mothers suicide among other things. All of these tales are told deftly, though the chronology doesn't always match up. I liked that though.

I think my high expectations are what hurt my enjoyment of this film. I heard that it was an intense thriller from start to finish, which wasn't true. When I realized I wasn't feeling incredibly excited, I was wondering whether or not I was getting into the movie well enough. I did not get into the Pitt/Blanchett storyline until near the end of it, and I felt there were moments in all four storylines that were just pushed for dramatic effect instead of realism. I hope this movie doesn't Crash on me. Haha, pun. But seriously, I liked Crash after I saw it. And then I started to actually think about Crash, and I hated it and was shocked that it won Best Picture. Babel and Crash are very much along the same lines, following disparate storylines, and commentating on the state of affairs in the world today. I think the difference comes in that Crash was not acting like there was any hope, there is racism, everyone is inherently racist, Ryan Phillippe kills Larenz Tate even though he seemed like the least racist of the bunch. Whatever. Babel at least acts like there is hope. One of my largest complaints with the world today is addressed with Babel also, that being how people are so separated by culture/politics/language, it is so hard to find unity. Babel manages to be about that, but also find light at the end of the tunnel. If Babel were Crash, it would have ended on an incredibly down note, and there would only be the statement "the world is divided, there is no solution." But Alejandro Inarritu is not Paul Haggis, thank heavens.

The direction in this movie is superb, the acting is as well. Really, EVERYTHING in this movie but some of the plot is great. But the Moroccan plot was predictable from the get-go, and the only thing I was feeling was "oh gee, i hope no one in these threads die." Nothing against Babel, but there should be more to a movie than that. Of course you don't want non-villains to die in any movie. The Mexico plot was much less predictable, and I really liked this one until Amalia left the children in the desert to find help. It's not that I did not understand why she left them there, I just feel this one of those moments where the story was going to a place it didn't need to go, it was just being manipulative in order to create tension. And the Tokyo storyline, while this one was the best done cinematically, thematically it left me wanting. I have never seen a movie about a deaf girl being treated like a mutant, but again, I felt it could have gone deeper than deaf girl looking for love in all the wrong places because she is deaf.

Gael Garcia Bernal is awesome, he had a small role in this movie, but he is just so awesome.

In the end, it's partially my fault that I didn't enjoy Babel as much as I would have liked. I just can't set my expectations that high. But this was in my top 4 movies that I'm looking forward to from now until mid Jan. The Fountain, Pan's Labyrinth, and Children of Men round out that list. Hopefully I can level off my expectations for those films before the same thing happens.

I read some reviews about the movie saying that people that cannot deal with the coincidences and happenstances will not enjoy the movie and that is their loss. I am in the middle of the road on not being able to deal with those occurrences. It wasn't so much the coincidences, but the pushing of the envelope, taking the plot to unnecessary places in order to evoke emotion.

But still, Inarritu is amazing.