Babel
Length: Single
Studio: Paramount Vantage
Rated: R
Website: http://www.paramountvantage.com/babel/
Release Date: 2006-11-10
Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael Garcia Bernal, Elle Fanning, Koji Yakusho
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Screenwriter: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo Arriaga
Music Score: Gustavo Santaolalla, Lynn Fainchtein
WorkNameSort: Babel
Our Rating: 3.00
The acting from Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi is exemplary in Babel, but this may be partly due to this Oscar wannabe’s disappointing blueprint. The more the movie progresses as a prescient provocation, the less it succeeds, and the more the astonishing acting provides a satisfying distraction. Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s modern Babel spans several languages and continents, all with characters struggling to communicate beyond their capacities. No strangers to multicharacter mosaics, the filmmaking team behind Amores Perros and 21 Grams coasts on an unrestrained and now-recycled formula, mashing up stories and chronologies and orchestrating puzzles of omissions and revelations that manipulate their melodrama. Here they’re done in by their overambition; scattershot comments on border patrols, xenophobia, terrorism and poor child-care stumble to one excessively tragic catharsis after another. At two and a half hours, it’s never boring but has trouble connecting the disparate characters into a cohesive whole. In fact, the Japanese story, while providing many beautiful, graceful moments, belongs to another movie entirely.
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2006.